Les prières de Delphine

Filmography: Prisme (2021), Les prières de Delphine (2021), Cinetracts ’20 (2020), Chez Jolie Coiffure (2018), The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman (2016), You Will Be My Ally (2012), Mavambu, Portrait of the Congolese Sculptor Freddy Tsimba (2011), Les portes du passé (2011), Cadeau (2009).

Cinéma du réel, MoMa Doc Fortnight, True/False, Sheffield Doc/Fest, DokuFest Kosovo, IndieLisboa, Open City Documentary Film Festival, IDFA.

 

It is very difficult to talk about Delphine after seeing and listening to Delphine talk about herself, in a film that also specifically deals with the dignity and power of words when narrating one's own story. A single space, her present apartment in Brussels, and a single protagonist, baring her soul to the camera of Rosine Mbakam, a compatriot who knew a very different country and life. Les Prières de Delphine is a surprising example of joint creation in which empathy and understanding are necessarily directly proportional to emotional openness. In this intimate environment, Delphine recounts with courage and anger, with pain and humour, in an exorcism that becomes cathartic.

Delphine had a tremendously difficult childhood in Cameroon. Following the death of her mother, with an irresponsible father in charge of his family, she was raped at the age of 13. Destined for prostitution, another dramatic event in her family made her life there untenable, and she ended up marrying a Belgian who was three times her age with the hope of finding a better life in Europe for her and her daughter, in search of that European dream that never arrives. Just like many others, Delphine is part of this generation of young African women who are crushed by our patriarchal societies and delivered to this western sexual colonisation as the only means of survival. Through her courage and strength, Delphine exposes these patterns of domination that continue to make prisoners of African women.

Miguel Zozaya