Dieudo Hamadi was born in Kisangani (Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1984. He studied medicine from 2005 to 2008. He then attended several documentary workshops. Dieudo Hamadi is the director of two short documentaries – Ladies in Waiting and Zero Tolerance – that caught the attention of several festivals in Europe (Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam) and Canada (Toronto). Ladies in Waiting received the Pierre and Yolande Perrault scholarship at Cinema du Réel in 2009. He then directed four feature-length documentaries that gave him worldwide recognition: in 2013 Atalaku, in 2014 National Diploma, in 2017 Mama Colonel, and in 2018 Kinshasa Makambo. He created Kiripifilms, his own production company. In 2019, Dieudo Hamadi was awarded the McMillan-Stewart Fellowship in Distinguished Filmmaking by the Film Study Center of Harvard University.