Lansana Mansaray (Barmmy Boy) is a Freetown-based director of photography, musician, and Emmy and Peabody Award nominated filmmaker.
His feature documentary, THE NEW BOATS, debuted on ARTE in 2022 and explores the lives of Freetown Peninsula fisherman whose livelihoods and family legacies are threatened by industrial Asian trawlers that overfish the waters off West Africa. In 2018, Mansaray co-directed and co-produced SURVIVORS, which explored the complexity of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. SURVIVORS became the first West African film to receive an Emmy nomination.
Mansaray is a founder and production manager of WeOwnTV at the Freetown Media Center, which provides local filmmakers with intensive media production training and professional development. His work as a filmmaker has garnered grant support from numerous international agencies, including ITVS, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Doc Society, Catapult Film Fund, the Bertha Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
