Leaf in the wind
( Une feuille dans le vent )

Jean-Marie Teno
2013 - 55 min - Vidéo HD - Couleur - France

Ernestine Ouandie never knew her father, Ernest Ouandie, a militant who was summarily executed by the Cameroonian authorities in 1971 after fighting for his country’s independence. In 2006, Jean-Marie Teno, one of Ernest’s admirers, met Ernestine by chance; she told him her life story, from a deeply painful childhood to an adulthood haunted by the abstract, absent figure of her father.
Teno, who kept a video recording of the reminiscence, decided to make a film from it when he learned that Ernestine had committed suicide in 2009. Centred on Ernestine’s raw, uncompromising testimonial, "Leaf in the Wind" is a moving reflection on the profound consequences of colonialism, not only for events but the deepest identity of individuals, generation after generation.