The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire

Synopsis

A sumptuous, spellbinding anti-biopic as provocative and elusive as its subject, this hypnotic journey through the world of Caribbean surrealist writer and anticolonial activist Suzanne Césaire daringly deconstructs the process of bringing an actually lived life to film. In the sleepy palm groves of the tropics, a small group of filmmakers—including an actor and new mother (Zita Hanrot) haunted by voices as she embarks on inhabiting the title role—stage scenes from the enigmatic intellectual’s life, exploring her youth in Martinique, literary legacy, and relationship with her husband, the writer and politician Aimé Césaire. Inspired by the structures of Suzanne Césaire’s own writing, which often took a colonial convention and unraveled it, THE BALLAD OF SUZANNE CÉSAIRE plants us firmly in the darkness and desire of its subject while acknowledging the impossibility of resuscitating a legacy partially lost to time.