On film's role in change

It’s very interesting as a filmmaker to work on the lighting of skins that are not white. So as a filmmaker, for me, it’s very important to make sure I work with people who will be able to film all the ranges of skin tones.

My work as a filmmaker is also to put the margins into the center and just to displace the camera, to film people that you don’t usually see, to have them voice their concerns in their own terms. Not filming them as someone who is above them and who is trying to translate what they say for people who are in positions of dominance, but to tell their story with their voices and actually have them teach people who usually look down to them.

Cinema is intertwined with the history of theater in France. Since the 16th century, there has been a representation of non-white people on stage. This shows that there’s been an interest of French people for the world, of course, but also for this subject matter of race and politics. It’s not something new and it continued after and with the history of theater, with the arrival of cinema.

As a French Black actress of West African origin, I’ve often heard that we have to be patient. We have to wait until the French society is ready to have a representation that is not only white. And when I look back to this time, I have the feeling that we, as French people, no matter where we come from, we have the same legacy. And this legacy is made of métissage. It’s made of this multiplicity of the French society. We didn’t arrive two decades ago with the waves of immigration. We’ve been there for a long time. Métissage is not only about mixed races. It’s not biological only. To me, it’s about a new culture that is constantly evolving because there’s such a mix of different people, different cultures that it doesn’t become one culture forever