REVIVAL
In 2014, Rosine Mbakam returned home to Cameroon for the first time in seven years, bringing with her her French husband and their young son. Mbakam had been raised in a traditional Bamiléké family, before beginning her studies at the Centro orientamento Educativo, taking a job at the private Cameroonian television channel Spectrum Télévision, and then emigrating to Belgium, where she earned a degree in film production from the Institut Supérieur des Arts in Brussels.
Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman, Mbako's first feature-length film, documents that return to Cameroon, where she reunites with her mother and processes in real time the split consciousness of the immigrant experience. Her primary interests are in the women of the community, who supported her ambitions, and in the traditions and rituals of Bamiléké motherhood.
FILM FEST KNOX is also showing Mbako's latest film, her first narrative feature, Mambar Pierrette, which mirrors Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman. Both are the work of an important new voice in world cinema.