Moussa Alex Sawadogo has been appointed Director General of the Burkinabe Agency for Cinematography and Audiovisual (ABCA). The appointment was announced by the Festival Panafricain du Cinéma et de la Télévision de Ouagadougou (FESPACO) in a Facebook post.
The ABCA was created by President Ibrahim Traoré in November 2024 as a unification of four culture-involved entities based in Burkina Faso: the Higher Institute of Image and Sound, the General Delegation of FESPACO, the Technical Secretariat of the National Center for Cinematography and Audiovisual, and the Directorate of Cinematography and Audiovisual.
Sawadogo has served as the General Delegate of FESPACO since 2020. He is also the founder of the Berlin African Film Festival (AFRIKAMERA) and has worked as the artistic director of the Ouaga Film Lab. He is a prominent figure within the international film festival circuit.
Sawadogo has held various leadership positions over the course of his career. He was the Press and Culture Attaché at the Embassy of Burkina Faso in Germany in 2005 and he initiated the Border Border Express and Moussokouma festivals in 2011 and 2013.
As a consultant, Sawadogo has worked with several international film festivals, including the Locarno International Film Festival (2012-2015), the Busan International Film Festival (2014), and the Hamburg International Film Festival (2016-present). He has also served as the Program Director of the Theater der Welt festival in Germany (2014).
In 2017, Sawadogo was in charge of programming at the Durban International Film Festival in South Africa. The following year, he became Manager of the Francophone Young Creation Fund. In 2019, he took on the role of Artistic Attaché of the African Cinema Festival in Lausanne. In 2020, Sawadogo was appointed as a film expert for the Africa 2020 season in France.
