This book represents the first monographic study dedicated to the work of one of the most important auteurs in African cinema. In addition to being the first filmmaker to win first prize at the two main festivals on the African continent, the Carthage Film Festival (in 1982 for The Wind) and FESPACO (in 1979 for The Porter and again in 1983 for The Wind), Cissé was also the first director to bring a film from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Cannes Film Festival, in 1987 with Brightness (winner of the Jury Prize), which then became the first African film to be distributed commercially in numerous international markets. Souleymane Cissé: With the Eyes of Eternity reconstructs the Malian director’s personal and professional trajectory, from his years spent studying, to the different stages that have marked his international recognition, to his most recent initiatives in the politics of culture, putting Cissé’s poetics in the context of other auteurs and trends in world cinema as well as inserting it into the international critical debate.