Chez Jolie Coiffure

Recruited by a Lebanese maid agency, Sabine leaves Cameroon and embarks for Lebanon. After many years of servitude, she escapes to Belgium, but her arrival there is complicated by the fact that she enters illegally, by way of Greece and Syria. She settles in Matonge, the African quarter, where she becomes the manager of the beauty salon Chez Jolie Coiffure. The patrons here, many of them undocumented immigrants, are not only be made to feel beautiful but can also escape the daily difficulties and harsh realities of their lives.

Unfolding in the intimacy of a hair salon in Brussels Rosine Mbakam paints a portrait of immigrant life through the intimacy of hair dressing. Sabine’s journey and the daily going on’s of the salon offer an intriguing depiction of the tenacity necessary as one finds stability far from home.

Akojo Film Collective

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