The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, the feature debut from artist and filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, aims to foreground its primary literary material and historical context, but instead directs more attention to its oneiric touches and environmental phenomena––the “wind in the trees,” so to speak. The title figure, together with her more widely known husband Aimé Césaire, were both at the forefront of the négritude movement, which sought to put Francophone literature by colonized peoples in greater dialogue with their African ancestry, and to depict this with a supple, surrealistic view of the world. Assembled from deep research, assistance from academic specialists, and consultations with the Césaire offspring, Hunt-Ehrlich’s bold formal schema still prevents us from fully absorbing these efforts: “feeling” does outpace our full understanding. The vibrant Caribbean music and torch songs on the soundtrack make plain it’s a ballad, not a pedagogic Lecture of Suzanne Césaire.

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