Dieudo Hamadi was born in Kisangani (Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1984 and studied medicine from 2005-2008. However, he then attended several documentary workshops and went on to direct two shorts, LADIES IN WAITING and ZERO TOLERANCE, which screened at festivals in Europe and Canada’s Toronto International Film Festival. LADIES IN WAITING received the "Pierre and Yolande Perrault" scholarship at Cinéma du Réel in 2009.
He then directed four feature length documentaries that brought him worldwide attention: ATALAKU (2013), NATIONAL DIPLOMA (2014), MAMA COLONEL (2017) and KINSHASA MAKAMBO (2018). His most recent documentary, DOWNSTREAM TO KINSHASA (2021) was the first Congolese film to be an official selection in the history of the Cannes Film Festival.
In 2019 Dieudo Hamadi was awarded the McMillan-Stewart Fellowship in Distinguished Filmmaking by the Film Study Center of Harvard University.