Identity as a Simulation: The Black Heroes of Omar Sy in Intouchables (Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, 2011) and Samba (Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, 2014)
Abstract
The popular films by the French filmmakers Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, The Untouchables (Intouchables, 2011) and Samba (2014), starring the actor of Senegalese descent Omar Sy, work as a critical approach to the historical and political period lived by the France of this period, but also as a faithful reflexion. Through narrative and cinematographic analysis, and taking Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic as a main reference, this article studies how the heroes performed by Omar Sy function as a questioning of the national integration plan outlined by the Nicolas Sarkozy Administration (2007-2012). In turn, the fact that these characters —black, poor residents of a banlieue— are fully acultural individuals, is a clear display of the limitations in the gaze of the filmmakers, aligned, without intending it, with the legislative and institutional discourse in force during Sarkozy’s mandate.
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