Making the Invisible Visible: An Interview with Rosine Mbakam (Web Exclusive)
by Shahnaz Mahmud

What is the power of cinema? It can mesmerize us, teach us about life, the world we live in, and ourselves. It is a question Cameroonian filmmaker Rosine Mbakam continuously seeks to answer in her work, along with the hope that her compatriots also understand how transformative film can be. Mbakam’s latest film, Mambar Pierrette, which marks the documentary filmmaker’s narrative feature film debut, uses a fictional approach to address that which is invisible—the social and political issues in the daily struggles of the title character. Mbakam makes clear that, here, fiction is not for fiction’s sake. Rather, it serves a specific and necessary purpose, giving weight to the story that might otherwise be difficult in the documentary format.

Mbakam has been making films since 2009, while still a student at the Institut Supérieur des Arts (INSAS) in Brussels. She has made Belgium her home since her studies began in 2007. But it was her time at Centro Orientamento Educativo (COE), an Italian nongovernmental organization, between 2000 and 2004, where she learned the mechanics of audiovisual media. That experience established the foundation for the types of films she wanted to make. Mbakam later joined Spectrum Télévision (STV), a private Cameroonian television channel, where she worked as a photojournalist and directed programs from 2003 to 2007.

She first gained acclaim in 2016 when she debuted the feature documentary The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman. The film, which screened at more than sixty film festivals globally, centers, for the most part, on conversations between Mbakam and her mother, with the issues of politics, family, and gender coming to the fore. Her follow-up film, 2018’s The House of Pretty Hairstyles, takes place in a hair salon in the Brussels neighborhood of Matonge, and follows the lives of the owner, a Cameroonian immigrant woman whose goal is to attain permanent residency in Belgium. In 2021, Mbakam documented the life of a Cameroonian sex worker in Delphine’s Prayers. The woman had been abandoned by her father following the death of her mother and bore a child at age thirteen after being raped. She turned to sex work in order to escape Cameroon and find a better life in Belgium.

While Mbakam chose filmmaking for her career path, she credits the vision of her mother and father for their children to have a better life. This goal was supported by other female figures in her orbit growing up, like her grandmother, who helped her develop a sense of self. The filmmaker emphasizes the freedom her family gave her to make her own choices in life—and, importantly, to speak her mind—and credits them for her strength of personality. Resilience was a necessity from a young age, growing up very poor in a dangerous neighborhood within Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital city. Constantly surrounded by violence, as a child Mbakam would rely on her imagination at times to get through the night.

Cameroon’s history of political turbulence is marked by colonial dominance, something very much at the forefront of Mbakam’s mind. Her desire as a filmmaker to deconstruct Cameroon’s post-WWI colonization by the British and the French is intended to show Cameroonians that they can live by their own terms, not those set by foreign settlers long ago. In 2014, Mbakam founded the Brussels-based Tândor Productions with Geoffroy Cernaix, an editor and producer. Its expansion in 2018 came via Caravane Cinéma, a mobile van that travels around Cameroon to enable Mbakam to show her films (and those of other filmmakers in the future.) Her desire is to bring Cameroonians face to face with the reality of the past that has, perhaps unconsciously, bound them to a certain way of living, and to break free from it.

Following its premiere in May at the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors Fortnight, and subsequent screenings at the London, Toronto, and New York Film Festivals, Mambar Pierrette will receive a limited U.S. theatrical release beginning in January, initially at Anthology Film Archives in New York, followed by select theaters nationwide. The drama focuses on the daily life of Mambar Pierrette (Pierrette Aboheu Njeuthat), a seamstress struggling to get by in Douala, Cameroon’s largest city. Torrential rains create floods in the city’s poorer neighborhoods and threaten to destroy her shop, which is her only means of survival. All the while, Mambar must carry on as a single mother to two young sons while caring for her invalid mother. Her sewing is exceptional, however, and customers line up for her expert handicraft, including dresses and school uniforms. She is more than a seamstress to these women—she is also a friend and confidant as they share their woes, stories of romance, and more, during visits to her shop.

Mbakam invites you into Mambar’s personal space within the first few frames of the film. She endlessly sweeps the floors, her ailing mother visible in the background. Thus, the intimate relationship between the film and the viewer begins. As in any good film, the audience immediately relates to the protagonist, and Mambar’s struggles are felt without a word spoken. To learn that all the nonprofessional actors are family members and friends adds even more warmth to the film. Throughout, Mambar endures numerous struggles. Returning home from work late one night, she is assaulted and robbed of the money she’s earned; the flooding damages the work she’s completed for her clients; she doesn’t know how she can support her children who need supplies for the new school year due to begin. Nevertheless, every time Mambar chooses to soldier on. “Life is hard,” she says, “and you have to keep going.”

Despite its narrative subtleties, Mambar Pierrette packs a powerful punch. While she exists in a patriarchal society, Mambar makes clear she is a force to be reckoned with. She was reliant upon herself even when she was happily engaged in a relationship with her children’s father. Despite the elder generation preferring her to stay in her “place,” Mambar fully embraces who she is, apparently not knowing how to move forward otherwise. As such, Mambar Pierrette speaks to the fortitude within us all.

We spoke to Mbakam for Cineaste in October 2023, shortly after her film screened at the New York Film Festival.—Shahnaz Mahmud

Cineaste: What inspired you to make this film?

Rosine Mbakam: What inspired me is simply my desire. My first desire to make films was to watch my family and the people immediately around me going about their daily lives. I didn’t want to tell a story where you see from a distance. I wanted the audience to look into the people whose lives are unfolding on the screen. My first feature documentary, The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman, focused on my mother in Cameroon. I faced so much difficulty to make people accept that film. Some of the criticism I received was that I can only make films about my family. I went on to other projects, like Delphine’s Prayers, mainly to prove that I can make films about other people. But with Mambar Pierrette, I wanted to go back to my first desire—to film my family and my tradition.

I would add that the inspiration came from thinking about my own generation—and wanting to make a film about someone who could carry a story about that. When I first moved to Belgium, it was so difficult to communicate with my family in Cameroon. WhatsApp—to be able to send messages and video spontaneously—was a revelation. It allowed me to have direct contact with family in a way that I never could before. We could share our daily struggles via these messages, just as we always did in our communities. When something terrible happened, I was frustrated that I couldn’t be there to help. I decided to write to be able to release this frustration, and that was the starting point for Mambar Pierrette.

Cineaste: Mambar Pierrette seems almost like a documentary. What were your your creative choices for the film?

Mbakam: Early in my film journey, I wanted to make fiction films. When I came to Belgium to study cinema, I discovered documentary films, but I also discovered the power of cinema to shape representation. Documentary gave me the freedom to deconstruct the legacy of the kind of cinema that exists in Cameroon—that which was shaped by colonization. As a filmmaker, I am calling on cinema’s power to show people as they are, rather than the depictions made by colonization. 

The documentary form gave me the intimacy I sought between myself and my subjects. It also gave me the freedom to experiment without having an intermediary between me and the reality of the people in the film. I needed that direct contact because I knew that, when I came to Belgium, I was also colonized. It was necessary for me to deconstruct that legacy of colonization before cutting my own path in cinema. Like many people, I was blind. Coming to Belgium, I learned the tools I needed to tell my stories, and the stories of others. 

Documentary helped me to free my gaze to see the world as I wanted to see it. It also helped me to understand how I wanted to make fiction films, that is, to adapt them to my reality in Cameroon. The narrative filmmaking style I was learning here was a very Western way of doing fiction. I knew I couldn’t make those types of films in Cameroon. If I did, I knew I would destroy all the power and the beauty that I wanted to show in my films. 

Cineaste: What are you trying to say with this film? 

Mbakam: With documentaries, I wanted to question colonization by Western society. Here, I’m questioning colonization in Cameroon and in Africa. I wanted to explore why in Africa, after more than sixty years of being independent, we are still living under conditions set by colonialism. The immediate answer is that we don’t have the possibility to think in postcolonial terms. I wanted to examine how colonialization is bound in our way of living and thinking. As a filmmaker, I have the responsibility to deconstruct this legacy of colonialism because that will help us to understand how we see each other in Africa. How we continue to see our culture, our traditions, through the prism of the settler, not through our own eyes. Through deconstruction of this mentality, we will be able to see our reality. 

Cinema, from the beginning, allowed me to connect to other cultures. I felt connected to the world—but not enough to my own culture. So, I began this quest: “How can you think freely? How can you impact your culture if you don’t see it?” You must free your thoughts before you can impact your culture. I truly believe that through this purity of cinema in Cameroon, people can start to change their mindset. 

Cineaste: More broadly, what do you hope to achieve with Mambar Pierrette? 

Mbakam: I want people around the world to connect with the purity that resides in each one of us. It’s the sense of truly looking at someone. I want to see that person beyond the physical. I want to connect with that person beyond language, beyond history, beyond culture. I really want people from any country to connect with Pierrette beyond what we present in the way of her story. 

Cineaste: As Mambar Pierrette marks your narrative feature debut, why did you decide to pursue this story as narrative film?

Mbakam: I could have made Pierrette as a documentary, but there are some elements that I couldn’t approach in that manner. Only narrative could do that. Otherwise, I would force the political to emerge in her daily life because she herself is not political. Yet, we see all the consequences of the political in the precariousness of her life. I needed a narrative approach to help me make visible what was invisible in her life. Fiction filmmaking here has a specific purpose. That is, fiction can add to the story I want to tell and give weight to it. It’s not only Pierrette that we see. We see a generation of Cameroonians working under the same difficult conditions. We also see the legacy of what the generation before was thinking. Fiction helped me to give density to the story.

Cineaste: What was it like directing your family members and friends, not to mention just the idea of directing actors for the first time?

Mbakam: I want to find a language that helps us understand one another. Even with my documentaries, I worked with people who didn’t know anything about cinema or its inherent power. I always wanted to share that power with people, including my family. In that regard, I believe the language of how we communicate is critical to execute a story well. There is a moment in the film, for example, that takes place before the pivotal party/dance scene, when Mambar gives her monologue. I guided her to be encouraging, but those were really her words, her testimony. I was amazed to see how she took what I wrote and brought her experience to it. I really enjoy the freedom that cinema can give to us. I believe cinema can bring a measure of confidence to be able to tell complicated, layered stories. We can, indeed, present our reality in the way we want to. 

Cineaste: How does this film speak to the politics of Cameroon? You are obviously a very strong woman, and you clearly desire for women—and people in general, both present and future generations—to have opportunities that didn’t exist before.

Mbakam: I know that in my country, the government will not necessarily validate my work in cinema. I must go and show my films on my own— even if that means just hosting a screening at my house with neighbors. That’s why we created Caravane Cinéma—to have the freedom to go where we want and show films. Even if I’m not allowed to rent a big space to screen my films, the government cannot forbid me from showing it in my house. 

I want to go through this process of deconstruction, of decolonization, every day because I’m not simply a filmmaker. I am a mother, a wife, a sister, and a child. I am examining how society functions. I want to learn on a continual basis. I want to know how to transmit things to my children. There’s that integrity between who I am as a person and what I’m showing as a filmmaker. I cannot compromise myself. It would be impossible for me to do that because for me, cinema is life and how I connect to the wider world. People have an inherent need to connect to others. Therefore, we must represent all kinds of people on the screen. And we need to connect if we are going to make the changes that are required. We need cinema to serve as a bridge to help people connect to one another and to society. The good thing is that we see, more and more, that we are all connected. 

Cineaste: What is next for you?

Mbakam: I am working on a project that will result in both a documentary and narrative film. It takes place in Cameroon and centers on the daily life of a woman whose dying son has just returned to her. 

Shahnaz Mahmud, a writer and journalist based in New York, has worked both in the United States and abroad. An award-winning journalist, she has written for Adweek, Screen Daily/Screen International, and The Hollywood Reporter.

Mambar Pierrette is distributed in the United States by Icarus Films. It opens in New York at Anthology Film Archives on January 26, 2024, and will soon thereafter be available for streaming on OVID in 2024.

Copyright © 2023 by Cineaste Magazine

Cineaste, Vol. XLIX, No. 1