Bassek Ba Kobhio

Bassek Ba Kobhio (1 January 1957 – 12 May 2026) was a Cameroonian filmmaker and writer who was the founder of the Écrans Noirs film festival in Yaounde, Cameroon. He was also the Director of the Higher Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Professionals of Central Africa (ISCAC) in Yaounde, the first-ever tertiary training institution for cinematography in the Central Africa sub-region.

Background Bassek Ba Kobhio was born in Nindjé in 1957. He started as a writer, winning a short story award while still in high school in 1976.

Kobhio's first feature film, Sango Malo (1991) was an auto-adaptation of his earlier novel. The film portrayed a new village school teacher whose indifference to traditional customs causes conflict with the school's headmaster and disrupts village life. His second film, Le grand blanc de Lambaréné (1995), brought out the complexities of character of Albert Schweitzer. Despite clear differences of setting and subject matter, both films "offer vivid portraits of flawed idealists who wish to do good, but are authoritarian, puritanical, at odds with their surroundings and neglectful towards their womenfolk".

In 2003 he collaborated with Didier Ouénangaré on The Silence of the Forest, an adaptation of a novel by Étienne Goyémidé.

Kobhio died in Yaoundé on 12 May 2026, at the age of 69.

Cultural leadership

Écrans Noirs Film Festival In 1997, he founded the Écrans Noirs Film Festival in Yaoundé, which became a major platform for African cinema.

Works Films Sango Malo / The Village Teacher, 1990 Le grand blanc de Lambaréné / The Great White Man of Lambaréné, 1995 Musique s'en va-t-en guerre [Music goes to war], 1997. Documentary. (with Didier Ouénangaré) Le silence de la forêt / The Forest, 2003

Books Sango Malo: le maître du canton [Sango Malo: the village teacher], Paris: L'Harmattan, 1981 Les eaux qui débordent: nouvelles, Paris: L'Harmattan, 1984

Legacy Bassek Ba Kobhio is considered one of the most influential figures in African cinema. His contributions span filmmaking, cultural institution-building, and the international promotion of African audiovisual industries.

His founding of the Écrans Noirs Festival and his cinematic works helped shape the development of the film sector in Central Africa.