The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire gets a UK release date

Filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich explores the life and work of a writer who “didn’t want to be remembered” in her debut feature, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire. A writer and feminist, anti-colonial activist from Martinique, Suzanne Césaire was at the heart of the Négritude and Surrealist movements in the Caribbean in the early 20th Century. However, much of her work was overlooked and overshadowed by her husband’s Aime Césaire’s political career and post WWII she stopped publishing altogether.

Suzanne Césaire was a writer, anti-colonial, and feminist activist from Martinique, who was at the forefront of the Négritude and Surrealist movements in the Caribbean during the first half of the 20th century. Césaire would also become an important Surrealist thinker, influencing the likes of painter Wilfredo Lam and writer André Breton. However, despite her critical contributions to Caribbean thought and Surrealist discourse, much of her work was overlooked, and overshadowed by the largesse of her husband Aime Césaire’s five decades in French politics.

The mysteries of this influential writer who published for just four years, and never again, have been an open question of Martiniquan, French, and Caribbean history. Filmmaker Hunt-Ehrlich researched the writer for five years in the making of this film, speaking with family members, and biographers as well as reading letters and primary sources. The film is inspired in part by the imagination of Therese Svoboda whose article “Surrealists in the Tropics” brings to life the infamous encounter between the Césaires and famed Surrealist André Breton in Martinique during WWII.

Shot on saturated 16mm Kodak film, Hunt-Ehrlich’s film is part narrative and part abstraction, actors recreate scenes from Césaire’s life, reimagining key events – her and her husband Aime meeting André Breton or Aime at a political rally – while new mother played by César-winning actor Zita Hanrot is distracted from work by the sound of her crying baby, sheets of paper are blown away in the Caribbean breeze. Ehrlich-Hunt does not elaborate further, instead she leaves room in this film for the unknown.

The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire opens in UK cinemas 18th July.