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 North African immigrant backgrounds. Their works have introduced new narratives, new faces and new forms, redefining the imaginaries of the seventh art. The exhibition Une nouvelle histoire du cinéma Français traces this history, spotlighting those who have helped shape and continue to shape French cinema.

Directors, from the pioneer Ali Ghanem to Mehdi Charef, Rachid Bouchareb, Hafsia Herzi or Lina Soualem, as well as actors Jamel Debbouze, Rachida Brakni, Roschdy Zem or Sami Bouajila, have helped shape a distinctive cultural history. Their careers, spanning France and the Maghreb, have helped redefine, across generations, the imaginaries of French cinema. Their films, often pioneering, have opened the way to unprecedented narratives, 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 nouvelle histoire du cinéma français chooses to stand with the artists who, since the 1960s, have written large sections 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 César awards, and press archives, Une nouvelle histoire du cinéma français offers a concrete and sensitive journey through this history. The exhibition brings into dialogue widely acclaimed works and others more rarely shown, some 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.