Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#58304
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Aïssa Maïga works on quiet performance rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Aïssa Maïga appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Aïssa. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, versatility, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, documentary, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Michel Ocelot, Jérôme Cornuau, Chiwetel Ejiofor and others, Aïssa Maïga helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2019) as Agnes Kamkwamba · Paris Je T'aime (2006) as Sophie (segment "Place des Fetes") · Russian Dolls (2005) as Kassia
Career snapshot
Ranked #58304 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2005–2026
Career length
21 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Où sont les noirs ?
Most frequent director
Michel Ocelot
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Michel Ocelot
Most common genre
Drama
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 21m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.5
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2010s
7.0 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Brother — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.0
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Paris Je T'aime, Russian Dolls.
Most productive era
2020s
5 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.72 films | 7.02 films | 6.23 films |
| Comedy | 6.61 film | — | — |
| Romance | 6.72 films | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2005Russian Dolls
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Kassia.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2019The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
7.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026"Opération dragon", la révolution Bruce Lee
The current state of the argument, as Voice & Commentary.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
9 of 9 films
as Agnes Kamkwamba
Directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Agnes Kamkwamba
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2019)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Agnes Kamkwamba gives Aïssa Maïga a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Voice & Commentary
"Opération dragon", la révolution Bruce Lee (2026)
Performance score7.0
"Opération dragon", la révolution Bruce Lee asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Voice & Commentary is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Claude
Brother (2019)
Performance score7.0
Brother asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Claude is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Marie
Promised Sky (2026)
Performance score6.9
Promised Sky asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Marie is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Agnes Kamkwamba
Start here. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is the clearest statement of what Aïssa Maïga does — accessible, 113 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Aïssa at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Brother (2019)
Keeps the drama register of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind but asks for a colder reading of it.
Où sont les noirs ? (2020)
Same director as Brother, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
"Opération dragon", la révolution Bruce Lee (2026)
Same director as Où sont les noirs ?, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Promised Sky (2026)
Same director as "Opération dragon", la révolution Bruce Lee, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Joel Coen
Director
1 film together
Notably Paris Je T'aime
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Director
1 film together
Notably The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Jérôme Cornuau
Director
1 film together
Notably Above the Sky
Michel Ocelot
Director
1 film together
Notably The Black Pharaoh, the Savage and the Princess
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Boy Who Harnessed the WindJoel Coen
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Paris Je T'aimeMichel Ocelot
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Black Pharaoh, the Savage and the PrincessJérôme Cornuau
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Above the SkySix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
as Agnes Kamkwamba
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
as Agnes Kamkwamba
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
as Agnes Kamkwamba
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Paris Je T'aime
as Sophie (segment "Place des Fetes")
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
as Agnes Kamkwamba
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Aïssa Maïga has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
21 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
as Agnes Kamkwamba
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
as Agnes Kamkwamba
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Black Pharaoh, the Savage and the Princess
as La conteuse (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Above the Sky
as Marion
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
as Agnes Kamkwamba
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Black Pharaoh, the Savage and the Princess
as La conteuse (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Black Pharaoh, the Savage and the Princess
as La conteuse (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Promised Sky
as Marie
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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