Ashley Harris, Trinity College Dublin
The banlieues parisiennes, the areas that form the urban outskirts of Paris, are home to millions and contain a multiplicity of spaces and experiences. However, the mainstream media imaginary has increasingly homogenised them with pessimistic images of deprivation, marginalisation, crime and danger. Already in 1993, Pierre Bourdieu noted the press’ creation and propagation of “fantasmes” (fantasies).[1] In 2007, Mustafa Dikeç demonstrated that the news had moved from a focus on the banlieues as victims of socioeconomic problems to describing them as the cause.[2] In her 2019 analysis, Mame-Fatou Niang demonstrated that while press attention in the 1980s centred on local issues, it has since shifted to questions of national belonging and global (in)security, particularly since 2015.[3]
Alongside this regression of press representation, mainstream cinema has played a significant role in propagating an essentialist image of la banlieue. Thirty years ago, La Haine (1995) brought attention to urgent contemporary issues like police brutality. Despite its critical and public success at the time, however, the film has since been criticised for its failure to represent women, its colourblind perspective, and its emphasis on drugs, violence and crime. Interlinked with these issues, critics also questioned the positionality of writer and director Mathieu Kassovitz as the white affluent son of a film producer from the eighth arrondissement of Paris. Nonetheless, La Haine created a model forthe now well-established subgenre of the cinéma de banlieue. Such films—which include Céline Sciamma’s Bande de filles (2014), Houda Benyamina’s Divines (2016), Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables (2019), and Romain Gavras’s Athéna (2022)—depict an impoverished, violent, divided banlieue that protagonists navigate through crime and unsuccessful resistance. As I have argued elsewhere, such films struggle to capture the authentic and ordinary lived experiences of the banlieues because they rely too heavily on dramatic narrative plots, and on actors, directors and producers foreign to those neighbourhoods, in order to meet commercial demand.[4]
As French and Francophone Studies departments run courses on the banlieues in institutions across the globe, banlieue films frequently serve as primary sources, which further perpetuates a particular vision of the banlieue and its inhabitants. Films, as articulations of space, shape how we understand the world and our place in it. When I first began teaching a class on the banlieues, I used anonymous forms to ask students what words came to mind on the subject; “Danger”, “pauvreté” (poverty), “criminalité (crime), “émeutes” (riots) and “Islam” all appeared, as did the comment: “ce n’est pas vraiment la France” (it’s not really France). When we teach the banlieues, it is essential to bring the history of their representation and their marginalisation into discussion, to bring nuance to our approach, and to use primary materials that do not replicate the dominant damaging imaginary.
In the context of this “crise de représentations des banlieues françaises” (representational crisis of the French banlieues) in press, cinema and classrooms, Alice Diop’s documentary Nous (2020) offers a counter-representation that is worthy of critical, academic and pedagogical focus.[5] The film interweaves stories from Diop’s own youth alongside her Senegalese parents in the cité des 3000 of Aulnay-sous-Bois with the daily experiences of those living at various points along the RER B trainline, including Vallée de la Chevreuse, Saint-Denis, and Blanc-Mesnil.
Diop cites several inspirations for her visual ode, starting with François Maspero and Anaïk Frantz’s 1990 book, Les Passagers du Roissy Express/ Roissy Express: A Journey Through the Paris Suburbs (1994), which recounts Maspero’s and Frantz’s one month voyage from the start to the end of the RER B to “Déchiffrer cette géographie, retrouver son histoire et lire le présent de ceux qui l’habitent” (Decipher this territory, rediscover its history and read the present of those who live there).[6] Diop has said of their photo-book:
[C]’était la première fois où je voyais la banlieue racontée de façon très différente de ce qui était du regard qu’on avait habituellement sur elle. […] Maspero s’affranchit complètement d’un regard journalistique ou d’un regard sociologique pour offrir à ces territoires la littérature… Non pas parce que ça chauffe ou que ça brûle, mais dans la banalité ordinaire du quotidien.[7]
(It was the first time I had heard the banlieues spoken about through a very different perspective from the way they were usually portrayed. […] Maspero breaks away completely from a journalistic or sociological perspective to bring literature to these areas… Not because it’s a place where there is trouble brewing or because there are fiery events, but for the ordinary banality of everyday life).
Like Maspero and Frantz, Diop avoids journalistic or sociological distance, preferring instead a cinematic homage to the same banalité ordinaire that her predecessors championed. Far from scenes of fire or riots, her shots include the routine life of children in Blanc-Mesnil, her nurse sister visiting patients across Seine-Saint-Denis, and commuters at various stations waiting to board the RER B. The angst and excitement of the fast-paced editing that feeds mainstream media depictions of danger, crime, violence and drugs are replaced with shots that are often long and slow as they focus on seemingly inconsequential events like the flickering of a lamp-post light or a game of cards between friends.
When describing her film project, Diop also reflects on the impact of the January 2015 marches that followed the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher. Diop experienced various forms of aggression when attending these marches, as debates on integration raged in the public spheres. She explains how, after she bumped into an older white person, she was called a “sauvage” (savage) and she describes her sense of being unwelcome there.[8] The next day, Libération put an image of the march on its cover with the headline: “Nous sommes un people” (We are a people). But, Diop notes, the photograph shows a predominantly white population as France’s “people”. This triggers questions of who precisely is the “nous” in the political and media imaginary of France, and who, therefore, are the invisible “autres” (others) who don’t feature in the photo. Diop’s project seeks to respond to these questions, weaving together an image of the real “nous” of France, in all its nuance: “S’il y a bien des mondes qui vivent à la lisière les uns des autres, le film veut tisser un lien et un chemin entre ces îlots” (If there are indeed worlds living on the edge of each other, the film aims to weave a link and a path between these islands).[9] Indeed, in the documentary, Diop refuses a singularizing vision of the banlieues. Instead, she joins a variety of portraits into a polyptych of modern life, from a sans abri mechanic from Mali to white aristocrats preparing for a hunt.
In the middle section of the film, Diop follows her sister, a nurse, as she visits patients across Seine-Saint-Denis and so gives viewers access to “silent, white people in economically fragile situations who live in their pavillons.”[10] In doing so, she emphasizes the range of experiences in the banlieues through a cross-section of classes, ethnicities, employments, and social contexts. Diop argues “if I wanted to film the suburb in its full diversity, I couldn’t just film young Black and Arab guys in baseball caps and sweatpants committing petty crimes. That’s the dominant vision, but there’s so much more, including this white working class that is quite anonymous.”[11] We see Diop’s aims clearly in scenes that contest an essentialist vision of the banlieues, allow the personal and the political to collide, and make visible the invisible. The presence of Diop’s sister highlights points of connection and intimacy among the diverse figures of the “nous” that Diop is attempting to represent. Scenes like these prove touching in their suggestion of hope for connectivity and togetherness, despite the realities of the gendered, racialised and class-based separations that are equally evident as the documentary journeys along the RER B. As Thomas Austin has remarked, “for every act of connection or reciprocity that it traces (conversation, storytelling, shared laughter, gestures of care), Nous also captures processes of distinction, discrimination and hierarchization.”[12]
Diop joins her own family’s story to the other portraits she traces, in part through the focus on her sister and also through old footage of her parents. She brings together the personal and the political to revalorize the experiences of migrants like her parents and their contribution to French society:
[Q]uand on grandit en France, étant d’origine immigrée, on avait intériorisé […] que nos histoires n’avaient pas de valeur. […] C’est […] à partir de cette blessure de l’absence de traces, l’absence de mémoires, que je fais du cinéma. […] J’ai compris que cette blessure, cette douleur, elle était à la fin le moteur de mon cinéma […] de filmer les gens qui disparaissent.”[13]
(When you grow up in France, and are of immigrant origin, you internalise […] that your stories have no value. […] It’s […] from this wound from the absence of traces, the absence of memories, that I make films. […] I realised that this wound, this pain, was ultimately the driving force behind my cinema […] of filming people who are disappearing….)
She inserts home videos of her now deceased parents into the project, giving them and others such as the Malian mechanic a place alongside depictions of white Catholics and aristocrats. Through this, Diop strives to re-affirm the “nous” (us) that is, in her words “negated by the government in power in France today [which has] this dreamed France that is eternally Catholic and white.”[14]
Unlike the singularising and fast-paced depictions of fiction cinema, Nous is a slow-paced reflective documentary that, through a loosely seasonal structure, presents a diversity of portraits. As Diop has noted, the montage can feel “antagonistic”[15] because of the differences in experiences depicted, such as the commemoration of Louis XVI’s death in Basilique Saint-Denis followed by home videos of her father in Aulnay-Sous-Bois as he describes his journey from Senegal. The film resists providing simplistic portrayals or simple answers to the question of who is the “nous” (us) of both the banlieues and France more broadly. While it utilises a slowness that can be challenging to some viewers, Diop’s work provides ample material for reflection that we, and our students, should engage with to better understand the banlieues and France today.
Primary Material
Alice Diop, Nous (2020) France. 117 min. Color. Athénaïse.
Secondary Sources
“Alice Diop filme le RER B : « Vivre ensemble est un slogan »”, C Ce soir, 23/11/2021, accessed 28/02/25, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOQFPzz-3aE
Thomas Austin, “Connections / disconnections: on Alice Diop’s Nous,” French Screen Studies, 1–14 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1080/26438941.2023.2283984
Pierre Bourdieu, La misère du monde (Paris: Seuil, collection Points/Essais, 1993).
Forrest Cardamenis, “‘Not Just a Formal Thing, but a Political Ethic’: Alice Diop on We,” Filmmaker, June 29 2022.
Mustafa Dikeç, Badlands of the Republic. Space, politics and urban policy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).
Ashley Harris, “Visual Cultures of the Banlieues: Precarious Peripheries or Creative Centres?” Nottingham French Studies, 62.3 (2023) Edinburgh University Press: 334-352 https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/nfs.2023.0392?role=tab
François Maspero and Anaïk Frantz, Les Passagers du Roissy Express (Paris: Seuil, 1990).
Mame-Fatou Niang, Identités françaises: Banlieues, féminités et universalisme (Leiden: Brill, 2019).
“Sortie du film “Nous” d’Alice Diop,” RadioFrance, 16/02/2022, accessed 15/03/25, https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/evenement/sortie-du-film-nous-dalice-diop-4209661
[1] Pierre Bourdieu, “Effets de lieu,” La misère du monde (Paris: Seuil, collection Points/Essais, 1993), 249-50
[2] Mustafa Dikeç, Badlands of the Republic. Space, politics and urban policy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 101.
[3] Mame-Fatou Niang, Identités françaises: Banlieues, féminités et universalisme (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 30.
[4] Ashley Harris, “Visual Cultures of the Banlieues: Precarious Peripheries or Creative Centres?”, Nottingham French Studies, 62.3 (2023): 334-352 https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/nfs.2023.0392?role=tab
[5] Mame-Fatou Niang, Identités françaises: Banlieues, féminités et universalisme (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 30.
[6] François Maspero and Anaïk Frantz, Les Passagers du Roissy Express (Paris: Seuil, 1990), back cover.
[7] “Alice Diop filme le RER B : « Vivre ensemble est un slogan »”, C Ce soir, 23/11/2021, accessed 28/02/25, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOQFPzz-3aE
[8] Ibid.
[9] “Sortie du film “Nous” d’Alice Diop, RadioFrance, 16/02/2022, accessed 15/03/25, https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/evenement/sortie-du-film-nous-dalice-diop-4209661
[10] Forrest Cardamenis, “‘Not Just a Formal Thing, but a Political Ethic’: Alice Diop on We.” Filmmaker, June 29, 2022, cited in Thomas Austin, “Connections / disconnections: on Alice Diop’s Nous,” French Screen Studies, 1–14 (2023): 5. https://doi.org/10.1080/26438941.2023.2283984
[11] Ibid.
[12] Thomas Austin, “Connections / disconnections: on Alice Diop’s Nous,” French Screen Studies, 1–14 (2023): 3. https://doi.org/10.1080/26438941.2023.2283984
[13] Alice Diop “Interviewed for ‘New Directors, New Films’ Series, Lincoln Center, New York, 5 May.” Quoted in Thomas Austin, “Connections / disconnections: on Alice Diop’s Nous,” French Screen Studies, 1–14 (2023): 11. https://doi.org/10.1080/26438941.2023.2283984
[14] Cardamenis, cited in Austin.
[15] Ibid.