El Héroe Senegalés (The Senegalese Hero)
A portrait of an undocumented Senegalese migrant living in Bilbao whose selfless act of courage turns him into a cause celebré and sparks a national conversation about immigration policy.
In June 2020, the video of a young Senegalese man leaping off a bridge to save an elderly man who had fallen into the River Nervión went viral. Soon after, an online petition began circulating on Spanish websites seeking to grant Mouhammed Diof special legal residency, reigniting calls for the government to provide tens of thousands of young North African immigrants pathways for legal immigration.
In the short graphic film El Héroe Senegalés, illustrator-director German Andino and aspiring filmmaker Mouhammed Diof animate his terrifying journey on the open seas from Senegal to the coastal town of Tarifa, where he reaches land, to Bilbao, where an instinctive act of selflessness makes him a symbol for social change.
Award-winning Honduran animator and journalist who received the 2017 Gabriel García Márquez award for Latin American Journalism for his graphic novella "El Hábito de la Mordaza" ("The Habit of Silence"). He is founder of Bilbao Media Lab and co-producer of the Bidi Bidi Media Lab.
