Issue 41
Notebook

In the presence of the racialised body: (post-)colonial iconographies in Dahomey (Mati Diop, 2024), Saint Omer (Alice Diop, 2022) and Stop Filming Us, but Listen (Bernadette Vivuya and Kagoma Twahirgwa, 2022)

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  • Ana Aitana Fernández Moreno,
  • Brunella Tedesco Barlocco
Ana Aitana Fernández Moreno
Universitat de Lleida
Bio
Brunella Tedesco Barlocco
Escuela Superior de Cine y Audiovisual de Cataluña (ESCAC)
Bio
DOI: https://doi.org/10.63700/1312

Published 2026-01-31

Keywords

  • visual motif,
  • Postcolonial cinema,
  • Colonial gaze,
  • Racialised body,
  • Documentary Film,
  • hybridization,
  • Postcolonial Iconography
    • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

Fernández Moreno, A. A., & Tedesco Barlocco , B. (2026). In the presence of the racialised body: (post-)colonial iconographies in Dahomey (Mati Diop, 2024), Saint Omer (Alice Diop, 2022) and Stop Filming Us, but Listen (Bernadette Vivuya and Kagoma Twahirgwa, 2022). L’Atalante. Journal of Film Studies, (41), 47–62. https://doi.org/10.63700/1312

Copyright (c) 2026 L'Atalante. Journal of film studies

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This article analyses the aesthetic, discursive and formal strategies employed in Stop Filming Us, but Listen (Vivuya and Twahirwa, 2022), Dahomey (Mati Diop, 2024) and Saint Omer (Alice Diop, 2022) to expose the persistence of colonial imaginaries in the representation of racialised bodies and propose an iconographic renewal as a way of reclaiming their identity and agency. Using a theoretical approach that articulates key concepts such as post-colonialism, epistemological violence and visual motifs, it examines how these films displace the colonial gaze and mobilise a critical iconography that destabilises inherited binaries (civilised/savage, reason/emotion, object/subject). The analysis is organised around the mutation of key visual motifs (the classroom, the work of art, the trial, the spectator, the white saviour) and focuses on the political dimension of these formal shifts. Through abstractions, generic ruptures and hybridisations between documentary, fiction and the fantastic, these films construct sites of enunciation where the racialised self produces meaning, reclaims memory and transforms the material and imaginary conditions of its representation.

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