With his new film Dammi, Yann Mounir Demange has been given free rein by AMI Paris to create a bold and emotionally complicated portrait of self.
Alexandre Mattiussi’s fashion house is no strangers to artistic collaboration, having launched a touring exhibition in collaboration with Magnum in 2022. There, a dozen photographers and video artists were given carte blanche to interpret the theme of ‘family.’ Granted similar freedom, Demange’s new film explores his own roots – spread between Algiers, Paris, and London – through a theatrically mounted short that splinters an overarching narrative of romance and self-identification into something impressionistic and experiential.
What narrative there is involves Riz Ahmed’s character narrating a desire to somehow change his past through repeated visits back to Paris to see his Algerian father who stayed there when his mother took him to the UK. At the time of doing that, he left his Arabic name, Mounir, behind – notably, ‘Mounir’ has been restored to the director’s name in the credits for the film – and now, when he comes back to France, he finds himself pulled between these three (national) identities. During one evening in a local bar with his father’s friends, Mounir meets Hafzia (Souheila Yacoub), who shows him a way to be in Paris as an Algerian, but this only serves to stoke the fires of his internal conflict.
The debates seem to rage within Mounir and between him and Hafzia – recriminations are laid at one another’s feet as well as at those of Mounir’s parents (played by Isabelle Adjani and Yousfi Henine). This happens through a constantly shifting landscape in which Ahmed and Yacoub traverse the geographies of realistic Parisian locations and minimalist stage sets. As if existing on the permeable boundaries between the internal and external worlds, they drift from inhabiting traditional dramatic fiction to arguing within some fabricated Brechtian dreamscape peopled by dancing troupes or obscured by an enveloping fog. The effect is tantalising and although the form denies the imperative to follow a plot, the palimpsest of dialogue scraps builds into a single colossal wave breaking against the psyche. Here, the various modes, moments, and mutterings coalesce into a fascinating portrayal of interior strife – Dammi is an excellent study of the dissonances and force of mind required to resolve a contested sense of identity.
Director: Yann Mounir Demange
Screenplay: Yann Mounir Demange, Rosa Attab
Cast: Riz Ahmed, Souheila Yacoub, Isabelle Adjani, Sandor Funtek
Producers: Alexandre Mattiussi, Gary Farkas, Clément Lepoutre, Olivier Muller
Cinematography: Paul Özgür, Benoït Soler
Editing: Rich Orrick
Music: Oliver Coates
Costume: Alexandre Mattiussi
Choreography: Josepha Madoki
Production: AMI Paris (France), Vixens (France), Wayward Films (UK/US)
Venue: Locarno Film Festival (Piazza Grande)
In English, French
19 minutes
