Waati is a 1995 Malian drama film directed by Souleymane Cissé. It was entered into the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.
Souleymane Cissé is a Malian film director. Raised in a Muslim family, Souleymane Cissé was a passionate cinephile from childhood. He attended secondary school in Dakar, and returned to Mali in 1960 after national independence. His film career began as an assistant projectionist for a... documentary on the arrest of Patrice Lumumba. This triggered his desire to create films of his own, and he obtained a scholarship to the Moscow school of Cinema and Television. In 1970 he returned to Mali once more, and joined the Ministry of Information as a cameraman, where he produced documentaries and short films. In 1972, he produced his first medium-length film, Cinq jours d’une vie , which tells the story of a young man who drops out of a Qur'anic school and becomes a petty thief living on the street. Cinq Jours premiered at the Carthage Film Festival. In 1974, he produced his first full-length film in the Bambara language, Den muso , the story of a young mute girl who has been raped. The girl becomes pregnant, and is rejected both by her family and by the child's father.more