Forces such as climate change, civil unrest, economic need, and domestic violence inform the migration patterns of women in the Global South, particularly African women. Cinematography is a powerful means of documentation, which speaks to the oral and visual storytelling traditions that cultivated pre-colonial African cultures. With this in mind, AMAKA explores five films that express the diverse narratives of African women migrants and immigrants – from heart-wrenching tearjerkers to uplifting eye-openers.
Chez Jolie Coiffure (2020)
Chez Jolie Coiffure (At Jolie Coiffure) is an intimate documentary by Cameroonian director, Rosine Mbakam, centred on Sabine, a Cameroonian lady who runs a small salon in the Matonge district of Brussels, Belgium. Filmed entirely in the salon, we get a glimpse into everyday laments and gossip at Jolie Coiffure.
We learn about the various journeys through Europe made by the protagonist and her friends. For instance, Sabine recounts several stories of people attempting to get to Europe through Lebanon, which is a popular transit country for these migration patterns as it touches the Mediterranean Sea. However, as Sabine explains, many women find themselves in situations of domestic slavery and abusive situations as a result of these navigations. Many African migrant women in the Middle East arrive as domestic help and become susceptible to exploitation via the kafala system, which ensures that migrant workers are legally bound to their employers, who sponsor their visas.
Sabine laments that after explaining the realities of the situation in Lebanon to her friends and relations and advising against the move, many women still choose to leave their home countries in Africa and travel there, illustrating the tenacity and desperation that underpins these migration stories.
Chez Jolie Coiffure feminises the typically masculinised migrant experience, as we witness everyday migrant life through a female lens. Conversations in Sabine's salon cover relationships, immigration issues, racism, dodgy landlords, skin bleaching, and funeral costs, all with women's voices at the heart. The salon acts as an anchor for Sabine, her employees, the visitors and salon neighbours, where they can share stories, vital news and inform each other while dealing with their uncertain status in society. The salon's resulting community and camaraderie is evident when the police appear to do their checks. Sabine quickly rushes upstairs to turn off the lights and lock up the salon to suggest it's vacant. Sabine and her friends later explain that the salon workers in the area will give each other warnings if they know police checks are underway and turn off their lights to inform them of police presence.
Chez Jolie Coiffure shows how African migrant women form communities and survive in their host countries. Sadness underscores the optimism of women like Sabine as we learn more of their precarious immigration statuses; Sabine still awaits a decision on her asylum application after almost a decade.
Farewell Amor (2020)
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Farewell Amor is a heartfelt tale about adjusting to new life and family reunion - often overlooked aspects of mainstream migration narratives. It tells the story of an Angolan immigrant family in the US, with a father, mother, and daughter, finally reconnecting after living apart for 17 years due to a series of failed visa applications. From the beginning, the incongruencies resulting from the time apart are stark. The father, Walter, who's been living in the US, appears to have assimilated during this time, prioritising work over spirituality when he bypasses Sunday church service to pick up double shifts at work.
Meanwhile, his wife, Esther, struggles to find her place in their new home, dealing with a new surrounding, new culture and, effectively, a new husband. Esther's character allows us to examine migration experiences from the perspective of those left behind, as we see her fight to retain her culture in the face of a new American life. These anxieties are chiefly expressed through her faith, as a devout Christian now living in a secular society, and her daughter, Sylvia, whose youth proves a malleable asset in the absorption of new cultural norms and values.
In the end, despite the family's various trials and tribulations, they manage to revive their intimacy, hopeful of what life in the US together may bring.
Stories rooted in trauma form a necessary part of the migrant narrative, but they are not the only accounts that take place. Farewell Amor is a depoliticised and honest insight into the layered lives of families separated via migration, which explores a successful reunification process between a loving and hopeful family.
Joy (2018)
Joy follows an eponymous Nigerian woman living in Vienna, Austria, working in the sex trade. Joy and her roommates are being trafficked by their "Madame" to whom they owe a debt for bringing them to Europe. In the first scene, which takes place in Nigeria, a witch doctor informs the woman that she is under oath to obey debt repayments or face repercussions to her or her family's life. We soon find out that her debt is steep at €60,000, and sex work is their only viable means of repaying it. Later in the film, Joy manages to repay her debt, but the limits to which 'freedom' is now granted are apparent. Despite no longer needing to engage in the sex trade, her immigration status remains insecure, with the police showing up at her door to inform her of her deportation. A later scene shows Joy back in Nigeria.
Just before the film ends, Joy is approached by a man who explains to her the process of travelling to Europe, suggesting a cyclical nature in exploitative practices and tragic outcomes in the African female migrant experience.
The film highlights the bitter reality of the so-called European dream, which challenges the dominant narrative that life in the West is inherently better than staying and building back home. Nonetheless, the willingness to experience hefty debts, hardships, and sexual and psychological violence over returning to Nigeria suggests an interesting mental state for the African woman migrant. Indeed, the promise of the elusive European dream is so persuasive that women like Joy are willing to repeatedly risk their lives just to access perceived liberation.
The 2018 release also highlights the predatory nature of sex trading in Europe, particularly concerning African migrant women. Armed with cultural beliefs in witchcraft deterring attempts to speak out against sex traffickers and escape, we understand how easy it is to fall into exploitation when occupying this social category of woman, African, poor, and foreign.
Mama Agatha (2019)
Mama Agatha is a wholesome short documentary film about Agatha, or “Mama Agatha”, a sociable and warm Ghanaian woman living in Amsterdam who founded a school that teaches weekly cycling lessons. At the film's start, we see women stumble and hesitate to get on the bike, but after instruction by the equally pushy and nurturing Mama Agatha's equal parts nurture and pushiness, they're able to showcase their newfound cycling skills. The women graduate the cycling school road-ready by the end. For these immigrant women, cycling is another essential hurdle to overcome in their lives in the world's cycling capital of Amsterdam, and they do so as a collective of over 700, presenting a creative metaphor for the integration process into dominant society by foreigners. Mama Agatha reminds us that the courage and determination to try and succeed at something new is rampant in immigrants' lives.
Girlhood (2014)
Girlhood is a frank, coming-of-age film about a teenage girl, Marieme, grappling with poor grades, a dysfunctional family and a teenage crush while growing up in the suburbs of Paris. Girlhood is a story about the generational impacts of migration, centring on the experience of a child of immigrants as she navigates culture clashes alongside the teenage qualms familiar to all. This centring is clear as Marieme is told that she will not be going to high school after failing her exams for the third time; the teacher relaying this information is out of shot, and we only hear her voice. A camera is a powerful tool in creating and reproducing power relations, and here we are told Marieme is in power. Consequently, we can focus on Marieme and her newfound girl gang, who take her in and provide a space for her when all other viable places are shutting her out. Marieme comes into her own and shows profound strength in forging her path. As she informs her boyfriend towards the end, "I don't want that life", in response to his talks of getting married and having kids. In turn, Marieme shows us that she has grown up and will figure things out on her own, equipped with heaps of courage to do so.
Girlhood privileges the unique space occupied by children of immigrants – the simultaneous awareness of continental African struggles via their parents, in conjunction with assimilation into a native yet foreign culture, with the desire to find one's path in the diaspora.