A Trip to the Country

Director Jean-Marie Teno travels through Cameroon, visiting the places of his youth. Yaoundé, the city where he used to live, still has no clean drinking water and his old school lies in ruins. The education he received there was European, i.e. universalist and modern. After 30 years of independence, however, Teno questions the values he and his country strove for back then. Yaoundé is still no Manhattan, he notes despondently – modern times are visible only in the form of concrete houses, canned food and a junkyard. Along the way, Teno passes illegal tollgates guarded by soldiers. An annual gathering of social workers these days is basically a sponsored beer party. A Trip to the Country is an essay about the false promises of the free market economy and the rejection of local values, such as respect for elderly people, generosity and solidarity. Teno confronts his memories with the present-day reality and pleads, ironically, for a typically African form of modernity. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)