French director Alice Diop, born in 1979, has established herself as an essential voice in contemporary cinema through documentaries portraying marginalized social realities, including La Permanence (2016), Towards Tenderness (2016), and We, which won Best Film in the Encounters section at the 2021 Berlin Film Festival. With Saint Omer, she made her fiction feature debut, winning the Grand Jury Prize and the Award for Best Debut Film at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, and also representing France at the 2023 Academy Awards. Her latest work, Fragments for Venus, part of the Miu Miu Women’s Tales series, was presented at the Giornate degli Autori of the 2025 Venice Film Festival.
On Saturday, 14 March, Alice Diop took part in a conversation moderated by Paolo Moretti and Maria Bonsanti, programmer and member of the selection committee of the Giornate degli Autori.
The meeting was introduced by Patrizia Rappazzo, director of the Sguardi Altrove festival, and preceded by a screening of the short film Fragments for Venus.
Fragments for Venus
2025, 21’
Director: Alice Diop
Country: USA, France
Distributor: Hi Production
Language: OV French with Italian subtitles
A Black woman walks through the galleries of a museum, carefully observing each painting, as if searching for a hidden clue. In the background, a voice-over announces the titles, describes the works, and gradually reveals the condition to which Western art history has too often relegated Black female bodies: marginalized, exoticized, silenced. Another Black woman moves through the streets of Brooklyn. She looks with wonder at the women around her, living, vibrant presences, contemporary incarnations of a new Venus.