Born in the village of Fad’jal near Dakar, Senegal in 1943, she worked as a teacher before going on to study ethnology and film in Paris. She made her first short film "La passante" in 1972. Her prize-winning feature-length debut "Kaddu Beykat" (Berlinale Forum 1976), is regarded as the first feature film made by a female director from sub-Saharan Africa. In 1979, Faye came to the Freie Universität Berlin for a video workshop and subsequently stayed on in the city with a grant from the DAAD. It was in this period that her ZDF-produced feature film "Man sa yay" was made.

Source: 73. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)