The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire - Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich

An actress, three months postpartum, reads through fragments of Suzanne Césaire’s archive as she prepares to perform excerpts of the writer’s work for a film about Aimé Césaire.
Inspired by Suzanne Césaire’s writing, which often deconstructed colonial conventions, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire offers a deconstructed biopic of the surrealist writer from Martinique. The film is less a portrait of this remarkable woman than an immersive experience with her. A feminist activist and member of the Négritude movement in 1930s Paris, Suzanne’s life was overshadowed by her husband, poet and politician Aimé Césaire. Filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich reclaims this nearly forgotten life through a fascinating approach, blending voice-over, direct address, and meditative 16mm shots of Martinique’s forests to reveal Suzanne’s complexities as a woman, artist, teacher, and mother of six.
The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire is Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s debut feature, starring César-award-winning actress Zita Hanrot. Artist and filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich (1987) is based in Brooklyn. Her work, focused on the inner worlds of Black women, has been shown globally, including at the 2023 Berlinale, 2022 La Biennale di Venezia, the Guggenheim Museum, Tate Modern, and the Whitney Museum of Art. The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (2024) premiered at IFF Rotterdam.