Born in Kinshasa, Alain Kassanda left the DRC for France at the age of eleven. After studying communication, he staged movie showings in various Parisian theatres and was the film programmer for the movie theatre Les 39 marches in Sevran, near Paris, for five years and created the festival A hauteur d’enfant, committed to films narrated from children’s perspectives. He has participated in several film festivals such as Ghett’Out Film Festival at the Brattle Theatre in Boston and BAM in New York. Colette & Justin, his first feature-length film intertwining his family history and the history of the decolonization of Congo, was part of the international competition at IDFA in 2022. Trouble Sleep, a mid-length documentary shot in Ibadan (Nigeria) where he lived from 2015 to 2019 was depicted from the perspectives of a taxi driver and a tax collector. The film received the Golden Dove for best film at the Dok Leipzig festival in 2020 and a special mention from the jury at the Visions du réel festival. Coconut Head Generation is his third film. As a spoken word artist, Kassanda is also known as Apkass, one of the founder members of the poetry collective Chant d’encre, inspired by role models like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron.