15 Facts About Leila Djansi

Leila Afua Djansi is an American-Ghanaian filmmaker who started her film career in the Ghana film industry.

Leila Djansi's father was a pilot and her mother a senior nursing officer.

Leila Djansi was 19 years old when her script Babina was made into a movie by producer Akwetey Kanyi.

Leila Djansi began her film education at the National Film and Television School, but left Ghana for the United States to continue her Film and Television Degree at Savannah College of Art and Design on an artistic honors scholarship.

President of the Ghana Library Board Readers Club for three years, Leila Djansi began her career in the entertainment industry in 1998 when she was a runner-up in a regional beauty pageant in junior high school.

Leila Djansi began her filmmaking career in Ghana at the age of 19 with the Ghana Film Company.

Leila Djansi worked with the state-owned Gama Film Company, where she wrote and produced Legacy of Love.

Leila Djansi followed with the advocacy film Sinking Sands which supports the Say No to Violence Against Women Campaign for UNiFEM Ghana.

Leila Djansi's Like Cotton Twines was an official selection to the 2016 Los Angeles Film Festival under the World Fiction Section.

Leila Djansi has been recognized by various international organizations for continuously using filmmaking to bring light to women's issues, and she has consistently made movies for women and about women while employing diversity behind and in front of the camera.

Leila Djansi is lauded for revolutionizing Ghana's film industry with I Sing of Well, whichmarked the onset of a unique narrative style never before seen in West African storytelling.

Leila Djansi's work inspired Ghanaian filmmakers to return, contributing to the telling of African stories.

Leila Djansi continues to receive acclaim for using film to narrate stories of black women.

Leila Djansi's first film was awarded a 2009 worldFest Platinum Award; the film, Grass Between My Lips, is a story of female circumcision and early marriage, set in a northern Ghana village.

In 2016, Leila Djansi directed Like Cotton Twines, an exploration of the practice of Trokosi in her native Ghana.