Chez Jolie Coiffure (2018) │ Black Women In Motion Film Series

The NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis presents a monthly film series exploring how Black women navigate displacement globally. Join us for a critical dialogue on place, belonging, and identity from across the African diaspora.

At the start of Chez Jolie Coiffure, director Rosine Mbakam (The Two Faces of a Bamileke Woman) stands outside the salon of the title: a tiny shop in the immigrant Brussels district of Matonge, established in Belgium by Sabine, a charismatic, larger than-life personality from Cameroon. Invited inside, Mbakam becomes a regular presence, filming over the course of a year as Sabine and her employees style hair and nails, dispense romantic advice, and share stories about life back home. The resulting cinematic “chamber piece” captures the day-to-day lives and concerns of immigrant West African women in a space they can call their own.