Reflecting on the perpetuation of history's traumas, Jean-Marie Teno's latest film continues his ongoing project of documenting the impact of colonial and postcolonial politics on the lives of the people in his native Cameroon. Leaf in the Wind is both a reclaiming of forgotten chapters of Cameroonian history and a foray into the personal stories and broken lives behind the history. Ernest Ouandie was a freedom fighter for Cameroonian independence who was executed in 1971 by Cameroonian authorities, leaving behind a daughter he never met. Teno met Ernestine Ouandie in 2004 and she told him her story: the struggle of being an orphan, shunned by her mother, living with and working hard for her unsympathetic extended family to survive, and eventually growing up to search for information about her late father. Having no immediate plans for the material, Teno put the remarkable interview aside, but six years later, while researching another project, Teno learned that in 2009 Ernestine had chosen to end her own life, leaving her three children and husband behind. Reopening the Ouandie archives, Teno seeks to restore his memory as inspired by the account of his daughter. The film is a testament to her and to her father, and her voice and her words are a questioning cri de coeur, making us reconsider the role of the hero in history. Teno's film invites us to ponder the price of freedom, and to ask ourselves if commitment to a cause is noble, or if self-sacrifice is ultimately a supreme form of selfishness, made at the cost of the lives of those left behind.