The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (2024) brings renewed attention to the life and intellectual contributions of Suzanne Césaire, a writer, teacher, and Surrealist thinker from Martinique. Often overshadowed by her husband, Aimé Césaire, she was a powerful voice in her own right, shaping Surrealism beyond its European roots and engaging deeply with anti-colonial thought.

Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s film is not a conventional biographical documentary but a poetic meditation on Césaire’s life and ideas. Drawing from her essays published in Tropiques, the journal she co-founded in the 1940s, the film adopts a lyrical approach. It explores Césaire’s rejection of colonial rationality and her embrace of what she termed the ‘Martinican nothingness’—a space of creative resistance and renewal.

At the heart of the film is the collision between historical erasure and artistic reclamation. Through archival footage, abstract imagery, and poetic narration, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire reimagines her legacy, situating her both within the Surrealist movement and the broader anti-colonial struggle. Her intellectual exchanges with André Breton, who visited Martinique in 1941 and praised her writing, serve as an anchor for the film’s exploration of her radical vision.