Mahamat Saleh Haroun

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (; ) was born in 1961 in Abéché, Chad. He is a film director from Chad. He left Chad during the civil wars of the 1980s. Haroun is the first Chadian full-length film director. He both writes and directs his films. Though he has lived in France since 1982, most of his films have been set in and made in Chad. Biography Mahamat-Saleh Haroun studied film at the Conservatoire Libre du Cinéma in Paris. He later went to study journalism at Bordeaux I.U.T (Technical Institute), and then worked for several years as a journalist in France. He directed his first short film Tan Koul in 1991, but he became famous after his second film Maral Tanié (25 minutes), directed in 1994. This film tells the story of seventeen-year-old Halimé, whose family forces her to marry a man in his fifties. Halimé refuses to consummate the marriage. In 1999, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun released his first feature film Bye Bye Africa, which he wrote, directed, and starred in. The film, a docu-drama, tells the story of a film director from Chad who returns to his home country.  It received a jury mention at the Venice Film Festival. Bye Bye Africa is the first feature film from Chad.   In 2001, he directed a short film Letter from New York City, which won the Prize for the best video at the 11th African Film Festival in Milan.