Name: World Cinema Fund Talk: Alain Gomis
Start: 2026-02-17 11:15:00
Location: Halle

Co-hosted by the World Cinema Fund, this panel welcomes Alain Gomis to discuss his filmmaking practice shaped across borders, various languages, and production contexts. With his Berlinale Competition entry "Dao", Alain Gomis explores new artistic choices and the challenges of financing and positioning diasporic films that fall into neither European nor African categories. The conversation places the film within his broader journey, marked by stories of disorientation, resilience, and characters seeking belonging. It also highlights his role as a cultural leader in Senegal through the Yennenga Center in Dakar, a training and screening hub for young filmmakers, reflecting his belief in cinema as a humanist in a community-driven practice.

Alain Gomis

Born in 1972 in Paris, France, he studied history of art and film. In 2001, he directed his debut feature film, L’afrance, which won a Silver Leopard at Locarno. His feature films Aujourd’hui and Félicité were both selected for the Berlinale Competition while his first feature-length documentary Rewind & Play, about the jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, screened in the Forum. In 2018, he founded the Yennenga Centre in Dakar, Senegal, a socio-cultural centre and school for cinema with the intention of developing film production and post-production in West Africa.

Yanis Gaye

Yanis Gaye is a French-Senegalese producer and co-founder of Goree Cinema (SN), Strange Fruit Production House(FR), and YETU (Un)Limited, a pan-African film studio. He specializes in international co-productions from Africa and its diasporas. His films have screened at Clermont Ferrand, FESPACO, and other major festivals. An alumnus of EAVE and Torino Script Lab, he mentors for Durban Talents, DFM’s Future Mentors Programme, and serves as Head of Studies for Locarno Open Doors' 2025 African focus.