Portal:African cinema/Selected biography/5

Rosine Mbakam (b. January 10, 1980) is an acclaimed Cameroonian filmmaker who has gained recognition for her work which explores themes of family dynamics, cultural identity and migration.

In 2016, Rosine Mbakam directed her first feature film, a creative documentary titled The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman, (Les deux visages d'une femme Bamiléké) . The 76-minute film is a personal documentary in which the director focuses on her return to her native country with her French husband and their son, seven years after she left. The film is built by a series of conversations mainly between Mbakam and her mother on varied subjects connected to family, gender, and also politics. The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) are among the sixty-plus film festivals at which the movie was screened.

In her subsequent work, Chez Jolie Coiffure (2018) she continued to document the immigrant experience, focusing on the lives of African immigrants in Europe. In her 2021 documentary called Les prières de Delphine (Delphine’s Prayers), she portrays Delphine, a young Cameroonian woman who has been caught in sex work in Cameroon. This earned her the Cinéma du réel Young Jury Award in 2021. In 2023, Mbakam released her first narrative feature, Mambar Pierrette, centered on a talented seamstress and single mother in Douala which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.