What Success Really Costs: African Millionaires in America, from Documentary to Memoir

• Hybrid event
• 1706, Dunton Tower, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6
• Zoom meeting link

The Institute of African Studies (IAS) is pleased to welcome Arzouma Kompaore, Burkinabè filmmaker, journalist, author, and former TV Executive Producer for Voice of America’s French to Africa division, for a Brown Bag presentation on March 17, 2027.

Titled “What Success Really Costs: African Millionaires in America, from Documentary to Memoir,” the presentation explores the evolution of Kompaore’s documentary project African Millionaires in America into a forthcoming memoir examining the complexities of immigrant success in the United States.

In 2022, Voice of America released African Millionaires in America, a documentary following African immigrants who built remarkable fortunes in the United States. The film attracted more than one million views within two weeks of its release and sparked extensive public discussion about faith, family obligations, visibility, social mobility, and the relationships between African immigrants and African Americans.

During this Brown Bag, Kompaore will share selected excerpts from the documentary and reflect on the stories behind the camera. Drawing from his ongoing memoir, African Millionaires in America: What Success Really Costs, he will explore questions of ambition, sacrifice, representation, and the responsibilities involved in documenting people’s lives and experiences.

About the Speaker:

Arzouma Kompaore is a Burkinabè filmmaker and journalist. He trained in one of the first film-school classes in Burkina Faso, studied film at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and spent ten years at Voice of America, where he was TV Executive Producer for the French to Africa division. His documentary African Millionaires in America (VOA, 2022) reached a million views in two weeks. He is the founder of Memoir Pro and lives in Calgary, where he is completing his memoir, African Millionaires in America: What Success Really Costs.

This event offers a unique opportunity to engage with the intersections of migration, entrepreneurship, storytelling, media, and identity through the lens of documentary filmmaking and life writing.