Ebbo, a doctor, has managed a development project fighting sleeping sickness near Yaundé in Cameroon for twenty years. Now that his teenage daughter is ready to attend boarding school in Germany and his wife wants to live near her, he is also meant to return to Europe. But is he able or even willing to do so?
Ebbo shares this film with Alex, who is also a doctor. Of French-Congolese origin and educated in Europe, he is sent to Cameroon to evaluate Ebbo’s project. Their two perspectives introduce us to different sides of the same place, but they don’t clash. They each unfold in their own time and space, revealing familiar colonialist patterns and questioning our assumptions about what should be familiar to us. They share the landscape and the vegetation which, without overstating the exotic, infuse the film with a little mystery.
Germany, France 2011, colour, 91mins, 35mm, with English subtitles.
Directed by Ulrich Köhler. With Pierre Bokma, Jean-Christophe Folly, Jenny Schily, Hippolyte Girardo
Book tickets through Eventbrite
Back
