The Spectre of Boko Haram

Production year: 2023
Country: Cameroon
Director: Cyrielle Raingou
Producers: Dieudonné Alaka & Véronique Holley

Since 2014, the terrorist organisation Boko Haram has led strikes against the villages and people of the Far North Region of Cameroon. Today, this constant threat of violence has woven itself into daily existence. In her profoundly affecting debut feature, Cyrielle Raingou follows a group of children as they carve out their own worlds amid the dangers of armed conflict. We meet the precocious Falta, studious and hardworking, eager to process her father’s death in a terrorist attack. Her classmate, Ibrahim, and his older brother Mohamad struggle with balancing their boyhood energy and a traumatic past that strays them from their eight and 11-year-old innocence.

Raingou, a native of the Far North Region herself, approaches her young subjects with a delicate and unobtrusive observance, allowing them to dictate the reality of their surroundings through their own words, movements and perspectives. The result is a distinct and profound study of the contrasts of a war zone: hope and despair, innocence and terrorism, the present and future, western influence and traditional culture. As the children prepare for school, gunshots ring out in the distance. In the schoolyard, amidst soccer games and jump rope, military servicemen patrol the edges of the frame. But Raingou holds on to the laughter and innocence of the children’s play, which stretches far above war’s reach.