04/09/2026 - VENICE 2026: Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu delivers a highly authentic debut feature film about an elderly Cameroonian mother trying to preserve her bond with her children who have moved to Europe

"I hope you'll be here in person next year." A very special birthday is being celebrated on Zoom - with her six expatriate children - by the endearing yet tenacious Yaoundé-based septuagenarian Josette, who’s the protagonist of Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu’s first feature film, House of the Wind, which proved a fine discovery in the 83rd Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti competition. The Cameroonian-born director delicately sidesteps all the pitfalls of run-of-the-mill world cinema films (heavy-handed dramatization, ethnographic tourism, etc.), quietly crafting an apparently modest work which speaks volumes without overdoing things and which doesn’t try to dress Africa up to please Western audiences.

"It’s a pity retirement homes don’t exist in Cameroon." For Josette (Josette Kwanya), life is a solitary litany: locking the gate and fastening the bolts at night, gazing at the city from her balcony or at the TV from under her mosquito net, occasionally going to the Bakassa community centre for women’s meetings, and chatting via video calls with her six loving but busy expatriate children ("I don’t have time, Mum, I’m working"). Rooted in her country, which she refuses to leave despite her children’s pleas, our widow dreams only of seeing them return home, and she clings on to one goal: to build a house for her son Benoît (who’s keeping the project funded via bank transfers). A turn of events subsequently sees her crossing paths with Sarah (Moudjeu Pouadeu), a young woman who first helps Josette before asking her a favour of her own: she would like Josette to pass herself off as her mother to her French fiancé (Adrien Jolivet) who will soon be returning to Cameroon. Over time, despite their differences ("I don’t like strangers coming into my home"), the two women grow closer and get to know one another, but obstacles lie in wait for their respective dreams…

Unhurriedly exploring the various layers of its subject (as if piecing together a puzzle), centred on bonds (familial, friendly, romantic, solidaristic) and their limits ("we hadn’t really understood each other from the start"), the film conveys an authentic atmosphere (vis-à-vis the streets of Yaoundé, motorbike taxis, torrential downpours, the suspended time of daily life at home, fleeting dreamlike contact, etc.) with near-documentarian credibility, while revealing fragments of its two protagonists’ pasts. Drawing on universal empathy for the figure of the isolated grandmother who’s ferociously proud of her independence (yet big-hearted, with hidden sadness), House of the Wind also touches, lightly and discreetly, on questions of identity and the future of Cameroonian youth (should they leave or return?). It’s a touching portrait, fully owning its refreshing modesty which comes courtesy of a filmmaker firmly in command of his vessel – and whose next voyage will be well worth following.

House of the Wind was produced by Horizons d’Afrique (Cameroon), La Mansarde Cinéma (France), Steel Fish Pictures (Belgium) and Merveilles Production (Benin), in co-production with the Red Sea Fund and the Doha Film Institute. Celluloid Dreams are handling international sales.

(Translated from French)