Rosine Mbakam

Rosine Mbakam grew up in Cameroon. She chose cinema very early on and trained in Yaoundé thanks to the teams of the Italian NGO COE (Centro Orientamento Educativo) where she was introduced to image, editing, and directing in 2000. Driven by the desire to develop her cinematographic vision, she joined the Belgian INSAS (Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle et des Techniques de Diffusion) in 2007. In 2012, after graduation, she directed her first short fiction film You will be my ally, which was awarded by several international festivals.

In a desire for independence, she founded Tândor Productions in 2014 with Geoffroy Cernaix. By producing her films, she seeks to defend the singularity of her vision. She directed The Two Faces of a Bamileke Woman, her first feature documentary in 2017, which was selected in more than sixty festivals (IFFR Rotterdam, Fespaco…). Her next film Chez jolie coiffure had an even wider audience (Dok Leipzig, True/False, AFI Fest Los-Angeles, Fespaco…). Both films were widely critically acclaimed (New-Yorker, The New York Times, LA Times, Variety…) In order to develop cinema in her country Cameroon, she founded the production company Tândor Films in 2018. At the same time, she initiated Caravane Cinéma, which ensures the screening of African films in the working-class neighborhoods of Cameroon’s major cities as part of open-air screenings. She now seeks to perpetuate this experience in the years to come.

In 2021, she completed her third feature-length documentary, Delphine’s Prayers. She is also preparing the shooting of her second short fiction film Pierrette. She divides her time between her production company (Tândor Productions in Belgium and Tândor Films in Cameroon) where she works on several projects and her teaching activities at KASK in Ghent (Belgium).