Exposition : Une histoire du cinéma français - Héritages maghrébins

For more than sixty years, French cinema has been transformed under the impetus of filmmakers, actors and actresses from the Maghrebi immigrant community. Their works have introduced new stories, new faces and new forms, redefining the imaginaries of the seventh art. The exhibition Une histoire du cinéma français traces this history, spotlighting those who have helped shape French cinema and continue to do so.

Directors, from the pioneer Ali Ghanem to Mehdi Charef, Rachid Bouchareb, Hafsia Herzi and Lina Soualem, as well as actors Jamel Debbouze, Rachida Brakni, Roschdy Zem and Sami Bouajila, have helped shape a distinctive cultural history.

Their journeys, between France and the Maghreb, have contributed to redefining, across generations, the imaginaries of French cinema.

Their films, often pioneering, have opened the way to unprecedented stories, blending the experience of exile, the quest for identity and the renewal of cinematic forms.

Rather than focusing on the figures of immigration as they have been represented on screen, Une histoire du cinéma français chooses to place itself on the side of the artists who, since the 1960s, have written large swathes of the history of French cinema without that history ever having been told.

Through film extracts, posters, shooting photographs, storyboards, iconic cinema objects such as Césars, and press archives, Une histoire du cinéma français offers a concrete and sensitive journey through this history.

The exhibition brings into dialogue widely recognised works and others more rarely shown, sometimes restored or digitised for the occasion.

The exhibition closes on a sequence turned towards the future: the irruption of genre cinema, the importance of women, formal freedom, the boldness of narratives and the emergence of new voices circulating between the two shores.

This exhibition is part of the Saison Méditerranée 2026. Curation: Clémentine Deroudille, exhibition curator, author and film director.

Lucile Humbert Beldjoudi, audiovisual projects officer at the Musée national de l'histoire de l'immigration, creator of the Horizons cinema residency. Supported by Chloé Dupont, exhibitions officer at the Musée national de l'histoire de l'immigration.

Scientific and artistic support: Aurélie Cardin,