Samba Gadjigo (b. 1954) is a filmmaker, writer, and academic from Senegal. He has worked as a Professor of French at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts since 1986. Gadjigo acted as Sembène's agent in the United States, and wrote his biography, Ousmane Sembene: Une Conscience Africaine (published 2007) / Ousmane Sembene: The Making of a Militant Artist (published 2010).

Jason Silverman (b. 1968) is a festival director, curator, filmmaker, and writer from New Mexico. He is the former Cinematheque Director at the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, and former Artistic Director of the Taos Talking Picture Festival. He founded the Native Cinema Showcase, co-produced with the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and as a freelance writer has published over 400 articles for publications including Wired.

Through their company Galle Ceddo Projects, Gadjigo and Silverman co-created the 2015 documentary Sembene!, which was a finalist for the Camera d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and won the Jury Prize at the 2016 Luxor African Film Festival. In 2017, Gadjigo and Silverman received grant funding to hold over 130 public screenings of the documentary in over 38 countries across Africa.

Born in Ziguinchor on January 1, 1923, Ousmane Sembène worked as a fisherman and docker in Dakar as well as Marseille following his move to France in 1947, when he also became involved in PCF (French Communist Party). His years of experience in this profession inspired his first novel, Le Docker Noir, and his subsequent exposure to the French trade union movement and PCF influenced his cinematic and literary works as well as his political and professional activism. Sembène's career as a filmmaker began in 1963 with the production of Borom Sarret, releasing his first of many films in Wolof in 1968 with Mandabi. In the 1970s, Sembène co-founded and edited Kaddu, the first monthly newspaper entirely in Wolof, cementing his role as an advocate for his native language. Also an active advocate for African filmmakers in the international film community, Sembène co-founded a number of professional organizations, including FEPACI (Pan-African Federation of Film Professionals) and FESPACO (Pan-African Film Festival in Ougadougou or African Film Week), in addition to actively participating in many others. Sembène continued to produce films and write novels until his death in 2007, winning a number of prizes and bringing attention and prestige to Senegalese cinematography.