Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich
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Writing Between Worlds: Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich on The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire
“For the pattern of unfulfilled desires has trapped the Antilles and America. From the time of the arrival of the conquistadors and the rise of their technical know-how (beginning with firearms), the lands from across the Atlantic have changed, not only in facial appearance but in fear. “So, far from contradicting, diminishing or diverting our revolutionary feeling for life, surrealism shored it up. It nourished in us an impatient strength, endlessly sustaining this massive army of negations.”—Suzanne Césaire, The Great Camouflage I recently had the opportunity to (virtually) sit down with my friend and fellow artist-filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehlrich to discuss […]
by Ephraim Asili on Jun 18, 2025 -
Rotterdam 2024 Critic’s Notebook: A Spoiling Rain, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, Under a Blue Sun and 102 Narra
The International Film Festival Rotterdam has always been something of a grab bag. This year, at the 53rd edition, the Dutch festival showed 424 films across its various programmes — a reduction from past years due to widespread budget cuts. Still, 424 films (including 183 world premieres) is a mammoth undertaking for any one film critic at a major festival lacking an intuitive method of whittling down a schedule. This is especially true for international press less interested in the trickle-down from Cannes or Venice — Agniezka Holland’s audience award-winner Green Border, Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast, and Alice Rohrwacher’s La […]
by Beatrice Loayza on Feb 19, 2024 -
Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich
Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich isn’t interested in convention. The 33-year-old filmmaker blends narrative and documentary elements to create surrealist interpretations of Black history and experiences—stories underrepresented in the Western film canon despite the continuous presence of Black filmmakers since cinema’s inception. “The thing that film needs to ask itself is if it’s interested in continuing to evolve,” says Hunt-Ehrlich. “If it doesn’t grow, it’s going to be left behind.” Whether or not the broader cinematic landscape is ready to change, Hunt-Ehrlich is honing her own distinctive approach to the dramatization of Black stories, one that values opacity and abstraction over linear narrative. […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020
