DELPHINE’S PRAYERS (LES PRIÈRES DE DELPHINE) Feature Films In Person at AFI Silver

Following the screening, watch a special conversation with director Rosine Mbakam and subject Delphine Awih moderated by Senior Segment Producer of WGN Morning News and WGN’s Entertainment Producer Tyra Martin.

Delphine, a 30-year-old Cameroonian woman, sits casually on a mattress. With filmmaker Rosine Mbakam, she will “just talk as usual,” describing what led her here, to this brightly lit room in a Brussels apartment. Over the course of several different meetings, her story unfolds through an emotional recounting that reveals a life transformed by rape, illness, poverty and betrayal. She speaks through the camera to Mbakam – herself Cameroonian and based in Belgium – and vacillates in topic and tone, between lightness and darkness and with an intimacy that could only originate from a relationship imbued with understanding, confidence, compassion and respect. As Delphine lays bare the scars of a patriarchy which imposes its power over women through sexual violence and dehumanization, surviving at all comes to seem miraculous. –Malin Kan

Continue the conversation on DOCS Connect, with filmmaker in attendance to respond to your questions, here.