In La Maison du Vent, Cameroonian writer-director Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu captures both the tragic cost of African emigration and the loneliness that accompanies old age through the personal, naturalistic, and tender tale of an unlikely friendship.
By Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku
In his debut feature film, La Maison du Vent (House of the Wind) (2026), Cameroonian writer-director Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu captures both the tragic cost of African emigration and the loneliness that accompanies old age through the personal, naturalistic, and tender tale of an unlikely friendship between a dogged elderly mother and a spirited young woman in the Cameroonian capital, Yaoundé.
At the centre of the film is Mama Josette Tientcheu, a character inspired by and played by Yanghu’s late mother, Josette Kwanya. With her story, La Maison du Vent also becomes part of a strand of African cinema that features the director’s close relatives playing versions of themselves, from co-Venice 2026 selection, Al Baraneya, featuring several members of director Ashgan El-Hamus’s family, to this year’s Tiger Award winner at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Variations on a Theme, starring Ouma Hettie, the grandmother of co-director Jason Jacobs.
La Maison du Vent also joins a growing body of African films—including Variations on a Theme and Maryam Touzani’s 2025 Venice Audience Award Winner, Calle Málaga—that centre elderly people holding on to their homes as sacred spaces while adapting to life without their spouses and children. Yanghu opens La Maison du Vent with elderly people alone in their homes and shops before settling on Mama Josette, who peels corn alone, stands alone on her balcony, and subsequently retires to her empty home to charge the phone she uses to keep in touch with her children whose photographs fill the walls.
La Maison du Vent is a co-production between Cameroon, Benin, France, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, a fitting detail for a film so interested in the dispersion of African families and the physical and emotional distances migration creates. Mama Josette’s six children are scattered across Europe, from Germany and Belgium to Spain and France. None of them lives in Cameroon. She worries about sending them too many pictures and videos, lest they feel too overwhelmed to visit. Yet, she believes that if she builds a house for them, it will encourage their return, even though they have made a home elsewhere. So, she puts pressure on her son, Benoît (Basseek Fils), to send money to complete the house that she oversees on his behalf.
It is a grave feeling of loss and distance that Mama Josette carries with her each day, one that is now familiar to one too many African families dispersed across the world. It is an unfortunate departure from the familial, communal, and land-based lifestyle that remains invaluable across much of the continent. Still, she turns down her children’s pleas for her to move to Europe to be with them, placing La Maison du Vent in conversation with a number of films—from Calle Málaga to Sarra Ryma’s Cannes Critics’ Week-selected short, What Do the Maknines Dream Of—that are fascinated with migration from the perspective of those who choose to stay.
La Maison du Vent can be heavy-handed in how it emphasises the economic and sociopolitical turmoil driving young Africans out of the continent, repeating the point through dialogue, television programmes, and political debates, as if Yanghu does not trust his audience to appreciate why so many young Africans are across the Atlantic “living with the white people” while their parents wander around their homes in loneliness.
However, Yanghu records Mama Josette’s loneliness, his true inspiration, with a subtle pervasiveness that is balanced out by the strength of spirit of his central character as she moves about town cashing money at the local bank and borrowing more money from her women’s solidarity group to complete the house she hopes will restore the family life that emigration has increasingly dismantled.
It is in the course of collecting money and visiting a cyber cafe to video call her children that she meets Sarah Ngo Mbock (Moudjeu Pouadeu), a young hustler who has fallen out with her own family when she needs family the most. With Sarah’s connected white fiancé, Adrien (Adrien Jolivet), expected to visit soon, she pleads with Mama Josette to take her in and pretend to be her mother.
At first, Mama Josette rejects Sarah’s scheme. But Yanghu follows the proposition with a heartbreaking sequence where the older woman witnesses what it looks like to die alone, followed by her own children making excuse after excuse for their inability to visit, with one of them even wishing there were good nursing homes in Cameroon where they could place her. It is a particularly harrowing statement for an elderly parent to hear, especially in societies where ties to land and family are a cornerstone of life and elderly care homes are relatively unpopular.
With her fear renewed in such a drastic manner, Mama Josette warms up to Sarah’s proposal, and their relationship blossoms as they visit the site of Benoît’s quickly-developing house, attend meetings of the women’s group, memorise stories to tell Adrien, and perform a delicious karaoke rendition of Ange Linaud Njendo’s 1960s classic, “C’est Toi Que Je Préfère”.
There is a sense that Sarah may be exploiting Mama Josette. That she comes up with her grand plan that allows her to move in with the older woman right after being disowned by her own family is already suspicious. But watching the duration of the arrangement unilaterally stretch out from a couple of days to two weeks to over a month feels like confirmation. “It’s all the same, isn’t it?” Sarah says in justification. And Mama Josette’s concerned children do not fail to warn their mother that she may be taken advantage of. But La Maison du Vent neither confirms nor denies, and Mama Josette does not seem to mind, either.
If there is indeed exploitation, it just might be mutual. Mama Josette’s intentions also come into question at some point. And once again, La Maison du Vent never confirms or denies. Nor does the film provide clarity on Sarah’s intentions with Adrien. Maybe it really is love. Or maybe it is just a pathway to Europe. La Maison du Vent is better off for the ambiguity, as Yanghu leaves the audience to decide as they would in the real world, burdened by their own biases and perceptions. Ultimately, what matters is the value of the relationships borne out of the film’s circumstances, and how these relationships change the lives of both women.
In the dynamic between Mama Josette and Sarah, Yanghu also explores the disconnect that can develop between parents and their children as they grow older, mirroring the same dynamic that exists between Mama Josette and her biological children. Sarah offers Mama Josette a second chance at parenting. Will she repeat her mistakes? Will her expectations change? Will she be more accepting and more understanding?
The pressures of age and distance expose the cracks in familial relationships, especially as the older members of the family near the end of their lives. With Mama Josette’s visible exhaustion with what she perceives as a lack of effort from her children, and with her attention now shifted to Sarah, the Tientcheu family appears thoroughly unprepared for the tragedy expected in a story that is about an old woman afraid of dying alone. But when tragedy does strike, it turns out to be unexpected, regrettable, and yet incapable of repairing the damage to familial life that migration insists upon. The cycle continues.
Rating: 4/5
*La Maison du Vent (House of the Wind) premiered in the Orizzonti section of the Venice International Film Festival in September 2026.
Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku is a writer and film critic writing from Lagos. She has a master’s degree in law but spends most of her time consuming, studying and discussing film and TV. She’s particularly concerned about what art has to say about society’s relationship with women. Connect with her on X @Nneka_Viv