MAMBAR PIERRETTE World Cinema

Screening to be followed by a conversation with director Rosine Mbakam.

“Life is hard and you have to keep going” are the sage words of MAMBAR PIERRETTE’s eponymous hero as she presses on raising three children, caring for her elderly mother and running a business as a skilled seamstress in Cameroon’s largest city of Douala. With her incisive narrative debut, expert documentarian Rosine Mbakam (CHEZ JOLIE COIFFURE, AFI FEST 2019) returns to her home country to paint another keenly insightful portrait of African womanhood, this time fictional, but imbued with the same qualities that make Mbakam’s observational nonfiction work so deeply empathetic. While Pierette (played by Mbakam’s cousin, Pierrette Aboheu Njeuthat) struggles to make ends meet, endures piling mishaps and setbacks (a flood, a mugging, mounting debts), she remains steadfast in her commitment to move forward, helping those around her and finding purpose in her ability to bring quiet joy to people’s lives through her artistry as a dressmaker. The narrative’s central dramas are refreshingly quotidian, with no ticking clock towards resolution, and Mbakam refuses worn cinematic tropes around hardship and poverty. Pierette is a fighter, not a victim, a character for the audience to identify with, but never pity. –Abbie Algar