Join The Africa Center and African Film Festival, Inc. for a screening of the documentary film Too Black to be French?

Special programming

Q&A with director Isabelle Boni-Claverie and The Africa Center CEO, Uzodinma Iweala

About the Film

In 2010, offended by the racist comments against black people held by Jean Paul Guerlain on the France 2 TV news, Isabelle Boni-Claverie organized several demonstrations on the Champs Élysées, negotiated with the LVMH group and obtained a series of measures to promote diversity. However, this incident, which she documents in the film, left her with a bad taste. How is it that today, in France, this is still happening? In response to this question, using a first-person approach, the filmmaker leads an investigation. She invokes the model story of her grandparents, an interracial couple of the 1930s. Reflecting on her upper middle-class childhood, she probes the relationship between class and race. Not without humor, in the manner of: “You know you are black when…”, she asks would-be interlocutors to testify before the camera about the exasperations that they experience. Both personal and collective, the film does not hesitate to call existing policies into question.
About Isabelle Boni-Claverie

About our Year-Round Community Engagement

Community engagement is essential to the AFF mission. We partner with a broad spectrum of arts and social justice organizations to spark discussion and activate the public around African cinema and culture. Learn More