We've become accustomed to his gritty comedies with fellow actor Fabrice Eboué, but this year Thomas Ngijol is inviting us to the Cannes 2025 Film Festival's Quinzaine des Cinéastes with his crime film Indomptables.
The film is an adaptation of Mosco Levi Boucault's documentary Un Crime à Abidjan. Thomas Ngijol chose to set the story in his native Cameroon. The director plays Commissaire Billong, a Yaoundé inspector charged with investigating the murder of a police officer. But on the streets and within his family, this man of principle and tradition struggles to maintain order.
Thomas Ngijol 's film may be a whodunit, but it also oozes comedy- much less marked than his previous films, but still present in the way he portrays the rough-and-tumble African family man, gruff with his children and colleagues. To portray him, the director drew on his own childhood memories - spent in France, but with a quiet, undemonstrative Cameroonian father.
In reality, the police investigation that forms the backdrop to the film is quickly sidestepped in favor of a fairly detailed review of Cameroonian society, with its cofidelic relationships (Commissaire Billong asks "Salue-moi" to everyone he meets) and its violence that permeates everything (police violence, of course, but also violence within the family), the residue of a patriarchy that is still very much present in Cameroon.
Indomptables will be unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival 2025. The film will be released in French cinemas on June 11, 2025.
Synopsis: In Yaoundé, Commissaire Billong investigates the murder of a police officer. On the streets and within his family, he struggles to maintain order. A man of principle and tradition, he is approaching breaking point.
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