[ Simon Panay ]

Son of winemakers, I first learned to make films with my brothers and a small mini-DV camera. At the age of eighteen, I ventured into independent filmmaking, earning the Young Talent of the Year 2014 Award from ARP (the Association of Authors, Directors, and Producers), under the sponsorship of director Gérard Krawczyk.

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My encounter with Burkinabè documentary filmmaker Souleymane Drabo then led me to create films in West Africa, particularly in Burkina Faso. Through documentary filmmaking, I experimented and gradually discovered my cinematic language.

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In 2016, I dedicated my first documentary to the subject of artisanal gold mines: Nobody Dies Here. The film was screened in 71 countries, selected in 397 international festivals, and won 134 awards.

 

As a recipient of the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation Documentary Grant and the CNC’s Auteur Support Program, I spent five years making If You Are a Man, my first feature-length documentary, filmed in immersion within a gold mine in Burkina Faso. The film, highly praised by the press, was released in theaters in France in 2023.

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Continuing my exploration of the fascinating world of artisanal gold mining, I filmed the fiction short The Boy with White Skin in Senegal in 2024. The film won several major awards, including the France Télévisions Grand Prize at the Clermont-Ferrand Festival and the Best European Film Award at Flickerfest in Australia.