Educational Media Reviews Online

“In your mind, you imagine beautiful things for yourself. The way you imagine your life, when you will live elsewhere. You only see beautiful things. You imagine what your life could be. Then disappointment comes knocking at your door. If you open the door it will enter, and when it does, it stays, it never leaves” - Delphine

Delphine’s Prayers [Les Prières de Delphine] brings us the diary a young African woman from Cameroon who enters the prostitution trade following a rape at age thirteen. The crime befalls her while traveling to a hospital to comfort an ailing family member. Tenacity and tragedy intermix while Delphine introspects with us across a resulting rejection by her family members and the struggle to survive a life that prior to the assault had already submerged her youth inside the violence of poverty.

Director, Rosine Mbakam, employs a bold confessional aesthetic. The charismatic Delphine, now living in Belgium as an adult, directly addresses the camera within vignettes that are reflective, and at times defiant. These are centered almost entirely inside her bedroom. Honest and unflinching, there is a remarkable power that attaches to these ways through which Delphine speaks her truth. The narrative builds within a series of spoken sorrows, memories, and recovery that rise into an extended plea for help to God. These stand in as a prayer to a loving and vengeful deity, one who Delphine may see reflected in the father who has abandoned her.

We meet the others in Delphine’s life through her descriptions. Bullying relatives, compatriot prostitutes, a too young sibling lost to malaria, and an angry father who blames his daughter for being raped. Perhaps counterintuitively, it is because we never directly view them on screen that the effect conveyed reminds us how those most impacting our lives so often operate removed from immediately adjacent frames of reference or control. Other fates invariably spin out from the stark randomness of the families or cultural geographies into which we are born.

The director chooses not to have us meet the European man who appears to be a benefactor to Delphine, nor do we meet her children. Words from just off screen suggest that joy may be in the wings. Yet the technique of encountering them at a distance, or solely through Delphine’s voice, contributes to a tone of otherness likely important to her worldview. In this we also encounter the kind of alienation one may frequently associate with the challenges faced by displaced persons or the survivors of trauma. This documentary from Mbakam, who like Delphine is Cameroonian by birth, is highly recommended for students or faculty whose research explores African studies, migration, women’s or family studies, sex work, or sexual violence.

Awards:
Young Jury Award, Cinema du Réel 2021; MoMA’s Doc Fortnight 2021; True/False Film Festival 2021; Grand Prize-International Competition, IndieLisboa 2021

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