After starting out as a visual artist and starring in Claire Denis's 35 Rhums (2008), she has been building a mutant body of work since the early 2000s, with short and medium-length films including Atlantiques (2009), Big in Vietnam (2010), Snow Canon (2011), Mille Soleils (2013) and In my room (2020), which have been selected and won awards at numerous festivals.

With her first feature film Atlantique (2019), winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, followed by Dahomey (2024), winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale, she has established herself as one of the leading figures in international auteur cinema and a new wave in African and diasporic cinema. Her nomadic, novelistic and political cinema transgresses the boundaries between genres and formats as an extension of her dual identity and asserted creolity.

By setting up the Fanta Sy production company based in Dakar, she is pursuing her artistic commitment to the African continent.

Her work is exhibited at the Frac Réunion (2020), at La Collection Lambert in Avignon (2021/2022), in London at No.9 Cork Street - Frieze (2023) and at Lafayette Anticipations in the group show Coming Show.

She has also taken part in major group exhibitions: House of digital art; Port Louis (2023), Frac Île de France (2023), Lagos Biennial (2024).

In 2016, she was awarded the Prix Yvon Lambert for young artists. In 2019, she was a finalist in the Talents Contemporains competition organised by the Schneider Foundation and in 2021 she was awarded the Mondes Nouveaux programme with the Pays Tremblés collective.