Cameroon / 1998 / 87mins / Drama, Magic Realism / French

This film follows three stories that take place in the slums of a city in French Equatorial Africa. At nightfall, people seem to regain a vitality which explodes in the bars to the rhythm of the latest hits from the music charts. The first part tells the story of Petit-Jean, a young graduate, who is unemployed and roams the city in search of work. From humiliations to frustrations, the destiny of this young ordinary African changes dramatically. The second part follows a young girl who transforms herself into an angel of death in order to free herself from a traumatic past. The final section is of an encounter between a woman and a man who seem ordinary at first, but a past which the woman had thought had forever disappeared, resurfaces in this man.

Francois Woukoache

François Woukoache was born in 1966 in Yaounde, Cameroon. He studied mathematics, science, and cinema at the University of Paris VII. In 1989, Woukoache continued his film studies at INSAS in Brussels. While there, he made several short films: Une Nuit et des Jours dans la Ville, Feuilles Morte, and Melina, which won awards at festivals in Amiens, Milan, and Paris in 1992. Between 2013 and 2016, he coordinated the Faces of Life project, which trains Rwandan women from disadvantaged backgrounds to use the visual arts as a means of critical expression and social transformation. His latest film, Ntarabana, a documentary feature, follows the work he has been doing in Rwanda for over fifteen years and concludes a triptych on Rwanda post 1994: We Are No Longer Dead, Icyizere, Ntarabana. Learn More