Delphine's Prayers (Rosine Mbakam, 2021) (Patreon)

Mbakam's latest documentary is essentially a portrait film, and as such probably bears comparison with some of the classics of the subgenre, like Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason, certain works by Jonas Mekas, or even Pedro Costa's In Vanda's Room, the sort of film for which the adjective "magisterial" was invented. Like the Clarke and Costa films, Delphine's Prayers is an extended interview with a person who has been marginalized by her society. Delphine is lost, unhappy, and often desperate. But she is nobody's victim.

Delphine tells her story to Mbakam in fragments. Her mother died when she was a small child. Her beloved older sister was thrown out of the house when she became pregnant. Delphine herself was raped at the age of 13, and her father didn't believe her, saying she was "a whore, just like your sister." She too became pregnant, and had to turn to sex work to support her child. She eventually marries a Belgian man who brings her to Brussels, where she cannot find work, has no real community, and lives with a man who belittles her. By the end of her story, Delphine is literally pleading with God to deliver her from misery.

And yet, the film is primarily a study in resilience.  "I never went to school," Delphine says,  "but I'm smart," and Mbakam clearly agrees with her. Even though there is an anthropological element to Delphine's plight, in that it reflects brutal patriarchy in her native Cameroon and unchecked colonial arrogance in her adoptive home of Belgium, the film never swerves from consideration of Delphine as a unique individual, someone who still harbors hopes and dreams despite the rotten hand she's been dealt. 

As Mbakam states at the end of the film, it is only the fact that the two women are Cameroonians in Brussels that brought them together. Mbakam recognizes that she holds a very different class position and lives in a fundamentally different world than her subject. And although Delphine's Prayers would have been a stronger film if Mbakam had woven that recognition throughout the film itself, it is still a notable admission on her part. She isn't just demanding that we listen to Delphine. She herself is developing her own ability to listen, to appreciate and respect this woman's unbridgeable difference.