On the Traces of Cruel City (Sur les traces de Ville Cruelle)
Cameroon | 2025 | 62 min | Documentary | French with English Subtitles
SYNOPSIS
Seventy years after the publication of Ville Cruelle, filmmakers Sarah Dauphiné Tchouatcha and Tamnou Koloko return to the world that shaped Mongo Beti’s early critique of colonial society.
In Mbalmayo, Cameroon—the town that inspired the novel’s fictional setting—the film follows two teenagers moving through spaces marked by that history. Their presence anchors a journey that connects lived experience, memory, and literature.
Through conversations with Odile Tobner and others who knew Beti, the film reflects on the conditions that gave rise to his writing: the colonial economy, the cocoa trade, and the social realities of the 1950s. Without separating past from present, it traces how those structures continue to shape contemporary life.
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Festival des Écrans Noirs, On the Traces of Cruel City situates literature as a space of observation, resistance, and continuity—carried forward by a new generation.