Portal:African cinema/Selected birthdays/25
Biyi Bandele (13 October 1967 – 7 August 2022) was a Nigerian novelist, playwright and filmmaker. He was the author of several novels, beginning with The Man Who Came in From the Back of Beyond (1991), as well as writing stage plays, before turning his focus to filmmaking. His directorial debut was in 2013 with Half of a Yellow Sun, based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. His last film was Elesin Oba, The King's Horseman (2022) a Netflix Nigerian historical drama based on Wole Soyinka's novel, Death and the King's Horseman.
Eriq Ebouaney (born 3 October 1967) is a French - Cameroonian actor. Among his African film roles, he is best known for his portrayal as the Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in the 2000 film Lumumba and as the lead in Le silence de la forêt (lit. 'The Silence of the Forest/The Forest') a 2003 adaption of the eponymous novel by Étienne Goyémidé and the first feature filmed in the Central African Republic.
Samba Gadjigo (born 12 October 1954), is a Senegalese filmmaker and writer. He is most notable as the director of critically acclaimed 2015 documentary Sembene!, based on the life of Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, often referred to as the father of African cinema.
Noufissa Benchehida (born 23 October 1975) is a Moroccan-French actress. She rose to fame playing the police officer Zineb Hejjami in the TV series police drama El kadia in 2006. Other starring roles followed including Aida (2015), Morocco's entry for the Oscar's Best Foreign Language Film and A la recherche du pouvoir perdu ("In Search of Lost Power"), for which she received Best Actress honors at the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou in 2017.