MAKA

By Elia Moutamid

Maka is a documentary about Geneviève Makaping, a Cameroonian-Italian anthropologist, writer and the first Black woman to be named the director of a newspaper in Italy. The film offers a detailed account of Makaping’s perilous journey of migration from Cameroon across the desert and the ocean, her arrival in Italy in 1982 following the tragic death of her partner, her success as a journalist and television host, and her more recent relocation and current teaching job in Mantua. Maka focuses on questions of national belonging, and it reflects on how the perception of migration and race has changed since Makaping first came to Italy in the 1990s.