Alain Gomis

Alain Gomis is a French-Senegalese writer and director, born in 1972.

His films explore themes of foreignness, the individual, and the invisible. He tends to work with a combination of professional and non-professional actors in a writing style that is built on an interaction with spaces left empty.

After his early short films, Tourbillons and Petite Lumière, which played in international festivals, he directed his first feature film, L'Afrance in 2000. The film won the Silver Leopard from the Locarno Festival and the award for a first work at Fespaco. Then came Andalucia in 2007, followed by Tey (Today) with Saul Williams, winner of the Étalon d’or at FESPACO in 2013. In 2017, Félicité, his fourth feature film, won the grand jury prize at the Berlinale and the Étalon d’or again at FESPACO. Short-listed at the Oscars, the film represents Senegal.
 
Alain Gomis regularly gives production and writing workshops, and, in 2019, he and Aissatou Diop created the Yennenga Center in Dakar to promote independent film production in Senegal and Africa.