Alain Kassanda
Born in Kinshasa, Alain Kassanda left the DRC for France at the age of 11.
He has programmed several film festivals such as Ghett’Out Film Festival at the Brattle Theatre in Boston and BAM in New York. Kassanda has also been the film programmer for the movie-theater Les 39 marches in Sevran, near Paris, for five years and created the festival A hauteur d’enfant, committed to films narrated from children’s perspectives.
As a spoken word artist, Kassanda is also known as Apkass, one of the founder members of the poetry collective Chant d’encre, largely inspired by role-models like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron.
Kassanda is the founder of production company Ajímatí Films. Colette and Justin is his first feature length film, after Trouble Sleep, a mid-length documentary shot in Ibadan (Nigeria) where he lived from 2015 to 2019. Coconut Head Generation won the Grand Prize at the 2023 Cinéma du Réel Festival.
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Coconut Head Generation (Alain Kassanda)
Directed by Alain Kassanda • Documentary • 2023 • 89 minutes
At Ibadan, Nigeria’s oldest university, a student association hosts a documentary screening and discussion group. In a country where dissent is frequently punished, this Thursday Film Series becomes a space for conversation and impassi...
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Colette and Justin
Directed by Alain Kassanda • Documentary • 2023 • 89 minutes
Born in Kinshasa and living in Paris, filmmaker Alain Kassanda embodies the classic immigrant dual identity: in the Democratic Republic of Congo he is seen as French, while in France he is seen as Congolese. Determined to understand th...
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Trouble Sleep
Directed by Alain Kassanda • Documentary • 2020 • 41 minutes
Kassanda’s freewheeling urban portrait follows two young men, Fred and Akin, as they navigate the crowded roadways of Ibadan, Nigeria’s third largest city. Engineering graduate Fred is beginning a new job as a taxi driver, while Akin p...
