Portal:African cinema/Selected birthdays/49

Abdellatif Kechiche (b. 7 December 1960) is a Tunisian-French actor, director and screenwriter. He made his directorial debut with the award-winning 2000 Poetical Refugee drama about a young North African who immigrates illegally to France. Among the eight awards it received was the Venice Film Festival Luigi De Laurentiis Award for Best Debut Film. Kechiche is the recipient of several César Awards and in 2013 of the Palme d’Or, Cannes Film Festival's highest honor, for Blue Is the Warmest Colour.

Suhaib Gasmelbari (b. 17 December 1979) is a Sudanese film director, screenwriter, and cinematographer known for the 2019 documentaryTalking About Trees. Filmed clandestinely, the film follows the efforts of the Sudanese Film Group, comprised of a group of veteran filmmakers, to reopen an outdoor movie theater in the city of Omdurman in the face of decades of Islamist censorship. It received wide acclaim and numerous awards including the FIPRESCI Prize at the International Istanbul Film Festival, Tanit d'or at the Carthage Film Festival, and the Golden Star at El Gouna Film Festival.

Flora Gomes (b. 31 December 1949) is a Bissau-Guinean film director known for the landmark 1988 film Mortu Nega (Death Denied). Shot fourteen years after independence, Mortu Nega depicts the struggle for independence and the challenges of the first post-independence years in Guinea-Bissau. It was the first fiction film and the second feature film ever made in Guinea-Bissau and won the prestigious Oumarou Ganda Prize at the 1989 FESPACO festival.