Artist Profile: Mamadou Dia on Taking Charge of the Senegalese Narrative

Journalist-turned-writer, director, member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and now Assistant Visiting Professor in Harvard’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, Mamadou Dia is spearheading the reclamation of West African narratives.

Born and raised in Matam, Northern Senegal, Dia never considered making films to be “a childhood dream.” After spending years of his early career working as a journalist for the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, he grew tired of the negative and monolithic narratives told about the African experience on the news.

“From that continent, people expected the same stories all the time,” Dia said in an interview with The Crimson.

Determined to introduce a more nuanced, complex, and humanizing perspective to African stories, Dia enrolled in NYU Tisch for an MFA in filmmaking in 2014. At Tisch, Dia met the friends and collaborators who helped him create some of his most meaningful films.

Dia’s biggest inspiration is his community, including the people and experiences of Northern Senegal. One of Dia’s first short films, “Samedi Cinema” (2016), was based on his own childhood. In the film, two boys translate correspondence from Fula — Dia’s native language — to French to save money so they can attend the sole cinema in their neighborhood. Dia had done the same thing as a boy. To Dia, the film is as much about cinema itself as it is about translation. It provides a way to “talk about different ways of communicating” through cinema, letters, music, and conversation.

“This idea [is one] of translating an experience to a film, translating a language to another one, translating a dream of kids who are watching a film in a theater,” he said.

Dia’s creative process emphasizes his visuals as much as his writing. He considers filming in Africa to be an asset for creating vibrant imagery because of the continent’s array of “beautiful countries and places.” Dia’s films also all feature Senegalese actors. Making these decisions are easy for him, as he expects that, with the right tools and right performers, the beauty of the African diaspora will shine through the screen.

“To me, making a film is telling a story, but also showing this inner beauty that we all have and share,” Dia said.

In 2019, Dia debuted his first feature film, “Baamum Nafi,” at the Locarno International Film Festival in Locarno, Switzerland. “Baamum Nafi” secured 22 nominations from film festivals across the world and captured wins at multiple festivals including Best First Feature at Locarno and Best Debut Feature at the Namur International Festival of French-Speaking Film.

Dia’s inspiration for his award-winning film came from a deeper concern. Dia comes from a family of imams — Islamic priests — and was saddened by the portrayal of Islam in media that he encountered when he moved to the United States in 2014. He described how such a portrayal failed to recognize the way religion is practiced in West Africa.

“Religion is part of who we are, but doesn’t define us,” he said.

Dia noted that West African religion draws from the religions introduced from outside the region, including Christianity and Islam. Nevertheless, it maintains a deeper connection with ancestral spiritual beliefs. Dia’s film follows a father and imam who tries to help his daughter make a life-changing decision between love and education against a backdrop of political and religious extremism. In the film, Dia was “combining the personal” with concerns about rising global extremism and a mission to form an understanding of how humanity became so divided, and how to navigate towards unity.

For his second feature, “Demba” (2024), Dia drew on something much closer to his heart. He lost his mother when he was 13 years old, and it wasn’t until he spoke to a therapist during the COVID-19 pandemic that he realized that he had been depressed through most of his adolescence. In making “Demba,” Dia returned to his hometown, casting a family friend and other non-actors — his neighbors and friends — to tell a story of navigating grief through traditional and modern practices.

“It’s something deeply personal and different from the other films,” Dia said.

In fact, all of his films thus far have been filmed in Senegal, in the same town and community in which he was raised. For Dia, making films in his hometown captures an essence uniquely understood by the people of Matam and broader Senegal. Even as he shares these stories with the world, it does not concern him if not everyone understands them. He focuses on showing people the way his community sees the world, “and that is it.”

This academic year, Dia is working on a new feature — “Augustus” — about the first documented portraitist to work in Senegal, the 19th-century African-American daguerreotypist Augustus Washington. Dia is collaborating with historians and researchers at Harvard and Columbia University to uncover Washington’s story, “fill the gaps” of Black history, and challenge the Western narrative of pre-colonial Senegal. With “Augustus,” Dia aims to tell the story of a normal person, “not a hero.” He has always prioritized this kind of storytelling, but found new appreciation for it in his time teaching at Harvard.

“There are more complex stories to be told,” he said.

As a voice for his community, Dia remains committed to doing just that.

—Staff writer Dzifa A. Ackuayi can be reached at dzifa.ackuayi@thecrimson.com.