April 21, 1940, Bamako, Mali) and one of the most popular directors in Africa. He became a film devotee as a young child, when his brothers took him to the open air cinemas of Bamako. By the time he graduated from secondary school, he had already organized a student film group and mastered the skills of a projectionist. After seeing a film on Patrice Lumumba (below), former leader of the Democratic Republic Of The Congo, in 1962, Cisse decided to become a filmmaker and won a scholarship to the state Institute of Cinema in Moscow in 1963.