The work of filmmaker Jean-Marie Téno focuses on the postcolonial heritage of African societies, particularly that of his native Cameroon. Shifting between feature film and documentary formats, Téno’s cinema, as one reviewer put it, “constructs the African landscape as a place of loss and the African subject as divided between what is and what never was.” His most recent film, A Trip to the Country, exposes the false promises of postcolonial modernism. Two modernist concrete high-rise buildings in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé—symbolic links to the metropolitan culture of the West—are contrasted with the ever-increasing degradation of the quality of life in the city. For Téno, the dilemma is symbolized by the “men in overcoats”—sharp dressers who are unable even to ensure running water or a functioning transport system.

Chef! is a documentary that addresses human rights in patriarchical Cameroon, where the experience of colonialism has been reinforced by corruption and archaic social practice. In the course of documenting in his ancestral village in Western Cameroon, Téno juxtaposes conflicting images: a traditional ceremony for a monument to King Kamga Joseph II, the filmmaker’s great granduncle, which soon turns into a celebration in honor of Cameroonian President Paul Biya’s one-man rule; a mob inciting violence against a 16-year-old boy who has stolen some chickens; a souvenir calendar that lists “the rules and regulations of the husband in his home.” Téno’s observations on domestic violence and male dominance suggest a deeply conflicted history marked both by colonial oppression and traditional kingship.