The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire

Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich's debut illuminates the life of remarkable Martinican writer, activist and surrealist Suzanne Césaire.

The significance of Suzanne Césaire’s legacy as a pioneer of Afro-Caribbean surrealism, a feminist activist and a co-founder of literary journal Tropiques finds director Hunt-Ehrlich offering up captivating fragments of her unknowable life.

Driven by Césaire’s letters, and with testimony from her family, the film seeks to honour lost memories and celebrate a writer who stopped publishing at 30 years old and diligently destroyed any subsequent writing. Resplendent in sultry tropical light and the lush greenness of Martinique, this delicately layered metafictional essay keeps our heroine’s radical voice startlingly present and brings her out of the shadows of her husband, French politician Aimé Césaire, as well as famed surrealist André Breton, whose work she inspired.