Dear Mom, yesterday I wanted to be free and I found out I was Black in France

From On ne peut plus rien dire’s first sentence, the tone is set. The film primarily addresses filmmaker Néhémie Lemal’s white parents, in an effort to explain to them what it means for her to have grown up in the context of a transracial adoption, passing the microphone to adoptees who grew up in France and inviting us to rethink adoption policies. It helps create a new discourse of what it means to belong for people who grew up in adoptive households, reframing the many consequences of adoption that are otherwise easily hushed up or denied—tellingly, Lemal’s denunciation of racism in France is directed especially at her entourage’s refusal to acknowledge it. What she has to say to her parents (and the public) is intimate, unfiltered, and confrontational.

The filmmaker’s position fits into a larger narrative, one also explored by filmmaker, author and adoptee Amandine Gay: "I don’t possess a single part of my past: I have no medical history, no family tree, no stories passed down over the years. So I have to write my own story. It’s the only way I can become something more than the accumulated silences, trauma and loss." (From Une poupée en chocolat, translated from the original French).

Gabrielle Ouimet
Tënk's Artistic Director

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