In Bantú Mama, its Protagonist Clarisse Albrecht Builds a Bridge Between Africa and the Caribbean
Still image from Bantú Mama. Courtesy of Point Barre Films.
One of many touching diasporic exchanges in Bantú Mama happens when the young Cuki (Euris Javiel), an Afro-Dominican child no older than ten, questions Emma (Clarisse Albrecht), a French-Cameroonian woman living in his home, if Cameroon is in Haiti, to which she explains Cameroon is in Africa, on the other side of the Atlantic. Cuki innocently asks if she can be both Bantu and French at the same time, to which she casually replies, “one doesn’t exclude the other,” in Spanish. Bantú Mama brings together the very complicated connections between Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe, all of their uneasy ingredients stirred together in a well-cooked sancocho. Emma is an Afropean woman from France (Albrecht was born to a French father and Cameroonian mother), who forms a life-changing bond with three Afro-Dominican kids in Santo Domingo when fate and a failed drug bust arrest collide. In its 77 minutes, Bantú Mama, helmed by its Dominican director Ivan Herrera, and the first Dominican film selected at SXSW in 2021, creates tender scenes where Emma, a childfree woman with very sudden and difficult new choices to make, forms a newfound family with the parentless Cuki, and his older siblings T.I.N.A. (Scarlet Reyes) and $hulo (Arturo Perez). The four come together in search of emotional connectedness and a chance at survival, while showing how differing Black folks within the African diaspora communicate and learn from each other.
Emma is a career woman who lives an independent and quiet life in France. The film never infers why she agrees to become a drug mule, there are no visible hardships present in her storyline. She’s a slender biracial Black woman with privilege and ease, who has a nice apartment and a parakeet named Coco that she feeds watermelon slices to. Once Emma lands in the Dominican Republic, Herrera’s lens moves sensually and slowly, catching decadent little details. When she takes a late night swim at her luxury resort, shades of purple beautifully reflect off the Caribbean Sea at dusk, and you can partake in the euphoric energy she feels dancing alone under neon lights in a nightclub. Herrera‘s focus on diasporic exchanges between Black people from Africa and the Caribbean happen frequently, and honestly are one of Bantú Mama’s greatest gifts. There’s a beautiful encounter between a Black resort worker who speaks French (it’s never specified if she's Haitian) while she’s braiding Emma’s hair into cornrows. The worker hums quietly and soon both women exchange pleasantries in French. The woman admits she’d love to visit Africa one day, and Emma longingly reveals the same sentiment as well. Emma and the worker’s class differences blur here, because ultimately we see two Black women craving a closeness to Africa and sharing these intimacies while bonding through their hair, which in itself is sacred among Black women.
Official film poster. Courtesy of Point Barre Films.
Emma’s criminal activities happen a week earlier than expected, and her drug smuggling operation quickly comes to a halt when she’s detained by Dominican narcotic officers at the airport, attempting to flee. Albrecht, who not only stars, but also co-wrote and co-produced the film with Herrera (her creative and life partner), plays Emma with sheer elegance and a quiet intensity, while in the midst of unpredictable and dangerous situations. On showcasing Emma’s full humanity onscreen, Albrecht shares, “I wanted Emma to have a quiet strength. A woman who manages to keep her composure. That’s her best asset to overcome the situation she finds herself in. She acknowledges her vulnerability and fears, but she needs to overcome them because breaking down won’t be helpful.” In custody, handcuffed, and sitting in a jail cell, Emma wrestles with her fears and despair. Herrera weaves in abstract images of Emma standing in a holding pen facing the ocean on Gorée Island in Senegal, at a metaphorical ‘Door of No Return.’ For four centuries, Gorée Island was the largest slave market site where European slave merchants trafficked enslaved Africans to the Americas, and it was the last African soil captured Black people saw before forcefully heading into an oppressive unknown. When fate intervenes—the police car transporting Emma to prison crashes into another vehicle—she’s the first one to wake up, escape, and slip into the water.
Herrera, born and bred in Santo Domingo, used his experience as a street photographer and having grown up in the capital’s urban areas, to cast Javiel, Reyes, and Perez, as the three siblings, who are real life kids raised in the barrios of La Capital. T.I.N.A., played by Reyes, the tough yet maternal sister who’s essentially raising Cuki, was originally written to be a boy, but that changed once Herrera met her at an acting program for underprivileged youth (Herrera also met Javiel there too). With more Black Latine visibility showing up on screen in film and TV, it’s so crucial to see phenotypically Black Latine young people in film, not racially ambiguous light-skinned Latines with distant African ancestry. T.I.N.A., an acronym for There Is No Alternative, and her older brother $hulo, an aspiring trap rapper played by real life rapper Travis Nokia, are self-sufficient teenagers burning the candle at both ends in trying to maintain their household, care for Cuki, and run their imprisoned father’s drug enterprise. T.I.N.A. and $hulo are riding on a motoconcho and hear Emma’s cries for help by the shore and bring her home. What unfolds between Emma and the kids, whose mother died years ago, is a surrogate mother relationship, natural and unforced. Emma instantly gravitates to Cuki, who is the baby brother yearning for the most love and attention. The street-savvy older siblings who are crime-adjacent ask her about the trouble she’s in but accept her without judgment.
Food is another diasporic connection for the new chosen family of four. Over salami and tostones, Emma picks up a toston and is told it’s “frito verde”, Emma explains she also eats fried plantains when they’re ripe like maduros, but they're called “aloko.” When $hulo is writing his lyrics and rapping over a trap beat, Emma puts on Amapiano to switch up his flow. This is truly the heart and soul of Bantú Mama: the bridge Emma builds to Africa through dishes, music, and dances, for three Black Dominican children living on an island that was the ground zero for European colonization and slavery more than five hundred years ago. Albrecht notes, “Through our relationship, Ivan and I have been experimenting and analyzing how we’re linked, how the African heritage is still vivid, how we can reconnect and honor our ancestors from the Motherland. Now, especially with social media, we have a new perspective of all facets of Africa, how diverse and different it is than what is usually shown in the Western world, we wanted to be part of this new narrative.” On many occasions, the kids ask Emma if she is from Haiti, “she doesn’t look Haitian”, T.I.N.A. quips. Which, of course, Emma can very well be. Their limited understanding of Black people who speak French only being Haitian is naive yet forgivable, given the lack of education on the richness of the African diaspora that isn’t taught in DR.
On the run from the law, Emma settles into her new maternal role, helping Cuki with his reading, teaching T.I.N.A. how to wrap her hair with headwraps, and shopping for essentials at a nearby market. She remains stoic and calm despite dodging danger at every corner and evading the police. Even when she’s rounded up by Dominican immigration agents, who are all Black, but yet are still unjustly detaining Haitian people. Herrera shot Bantú Mama in Santo Domingo’s El Capotillo, a neighborhood vilified by the media for its high crime rate, but the director focused on the vibrant life inside the community and its people, not Black trauma, death, and suffering. Herrera’s lens was very intentional in showing nuances, $hulo’s rap cypher with his friends, young men performing badass motorcycle tricks, and a pensive Cuki sitting on the roof and simply reflecting. On this careful intent, Herrera notes, “We were going to portray a different side of Capotillo, one that’s also there but that you can easily miss if you focus on violence, poverty or just the day-to-day struggle. We had to show that this is also a place for contemplation, fun, beauty, and dignity. We didn’t change anything, everything was there, we just allowed ourselves to recognize the poetic side of Capotillo.” T.I.N.A. and $hulo may have to spend several more years in El Capotillo but she doesn’t wish that for Cuki’s future, and so she proposes Emma with an ultimatum: she’ll help Emma with money she desperately needs to flee DR, but she has to take Cuki with her.
In its truest sense Bantú Mama is a labor of love between Herrera and Albrecht, who’ve been in a relationship for over a decade. Their eclectic backgrounds, Herrera, a photographer, video director, and former pro surfer, and Albrecht, a model, and singer/songwriter, have led them to collaborate creatively over the years. Herrera runs Too Caribbean, a production services venture on the northern coast of DR, and together with Albrecht, they write and direct their own projects under Point Barre, their joint film production company. Bantú Mama was shot in the Dominican Republic, Senegal, and France, savvily produced on a lean budget, financed by themselves, friends, and family. Their sacrifices and hustling have clearly paid off, as the accolades have been rolling in steadily, including ‘Best Performer’ for Albrecht at the Durban International Festival Awards, earlier this year.
Abantu (shortened to Bantu by European colonizers) in Zulu means ‘people’, and in Bantú Mama, Black people are essentially saving each other. There is no white savior, or a European doing missionary work who wants to “help” three impoverished Black siblings escape El Capotillo. Emma and Cuki get a second chance and begin a new life on the continent. She arrives at their new home wearing a gorgeous marigold dress and finds Cuki readling Le Petit Prince all on his own. Africa and the Caribbean are reconciling and closely listening to one another.
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Bantú Mama has officially been selected as Dominican Republic's 2023 entry for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards, and was recently acquired by Ava DuVernay's Array to stream on Netflix starting November 17th. Watch the official trailer below.
Jasmin Hernandez (she/her) is the Black Latinx founder and editor in chief of Gallery Gurls. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Paper, Bustle, Elle, Artsy, Sotheby’s and more. She is the debut author of We Are Here: Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World, (Abrams, 2021). She is a born and bred New Yorker born to Dominican parents, based in Harlem, New York City. To learn more follow @gallerygurls.