Afro-Diasporic French Identities

Synopsis: In the French sociopolitical context, the stigmatization of “the other” through the narrow lens of color contributes to a crisis of citizenship and memory. Despite having French citizenship, the individual whose physical features connect him/her to far-off lands is described by the following adjectives: “foreigner”, “immigrant”, “Arab”, “Asian”, or “black/noir-e”.  From a creative and analytical perspective, Afro-Diasporic French Identities responds to these complexities in France by exposing the challenges and contradictions that “Black French” identity and citizenship represent at this juncture in French society. The documentary examines additionally how tensions inherited from the founding violence of slavery and colonization undermine the promise of liberty, equality, and fraternity, established with the French Republic. Through a series of interviews with musicians, artists, thinkers, and writers, Afro-Diasporic French Identities addresses the relation between the radicalizing of identity and French citizenship, the hermeneutics of lived experience, academic knowledge, and artistic production in order to shed an avant-garde light on pressing questions that remain under-scrutinized in metropolitan France.