Alice Diop, the 2026–27 Avenali Chair in the Humanities, is one of the most significant filmmakers working in France today. In conjunction with her residency at UC Berkeley, BAMPFA presents a retrospective of Diop’s films, followed by conversations with the filmmaker.

Diop’s cinema is rooted in Seine-Saint-Denis, the suburban department on the outskirts of Paris where she grew up — a world largely absent from French screens. Her films counter the collective imaginary that has long defined territories like Seine-Saint-Denis, offering instead an intimate, granular account of the lives lived within them. Across eight documentaries and her debut fiction film, Saint Omer (2022), she has crafted a cinema of formal rigor and ethical commitment, attending to the overlapping pressures of racial, economic, geographic, and gendered exclusion.

In a 2022 interview, Diop spoke of discovering cinema’s potential “as a tool for historical, sociological, political, anthropological reflection” through filmmakers like Frederick Wiseman. However, she explained, it took her “a long time to admit to myself that I was a filmmaker because — coming from where I come from, as a woman, as a Black woman, as a person who’s not an industry insider . . . there was nothing in place to make me feel legitimate. I entered cinema as a kind of a pirate, as a way to deal with my rage, my melancholy, my pain, my sadness, my despair at inhabiting a society that refused to look at me and at my family."

See BAMPFA for more details and to purchase tickets.

In Conversation with Debarati Sanyal (French)
Saint Omer (2022)
Thursday, September 3, 2026 | 7:00 pm
 

In Conversation with Maya Sidhu (French)
We (2021)
Friday, September 4, 2026 | 7:00 pm
 

In Conversation with Iggy Cortez (Film & Media)
On Call (2016)
Thursday, September 10, 2026 | 7 pm
 

In Conversation with Damon Young (French and Film & Media)
Danton's Death (2011) followed by Towards Tenderness (2016)
Sunday, September 13, 2026 | 3:30 pm
 

Film Introduced by Maya Sidhu (French)
Senegalese Meet Sene-Gallic (2007) followed by Fragments for Venus (2025)
Friday, September 18, 2026 | 7 pm
Free admission. Tickets available at the admissions desk at 6 pm.

Presented in partnership with BAMPFA; Department of French; Villa Albertine, San Francisco; Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry; Center for African Studies