LA RENAISSANCE
Nader Ayache
France / 2023 / 55'
Centre National des Arts Plastiques Prize – Lago Residency Jury Prize 2023

Nader Ayache is not afraid to put his body to the test of cinema. He had already proven this in La guerre des centimes, where he daringly cycled through Paris, camera in one hand, handlebars in the other. Here, he becomes a camera-man, tripod-legs, and lens-eye, embodying the double of Fadhel Messaoudi, an oriental lute master left between life and death by the accident that violently opens the film.

After this in media res beginning, the director propels us into a Chris Marker-like beyond, where the musician’s double finds himself “awakened in another time and born a second time as an adult” (La Jetée). Wearing a virtual reality headset, he is sent back to Earth by a peculiar ferryman with oversized black glasses, a profane figure played by filmmaker Jilani Saadi.

With minimal resources, La Renaissance borrows some of Saadi’s insolent grace and incorporates elements of video game grammar. It sets up a cunning fictional device, fueled by improvisation and resourcefulness, that reinvents the portrait genre: a subjective vision, evolving stages, an avatar. The avatar Fadhel chooses for his double is Abou Hourayra, the eponymous character of a novel by Mahmoud Messadi, which tells the story of a great departure into the unknown.

Here, the adventure is more mundane—marked by fragmented images of subway rides and walks through a bleak, cold Paris—yet it tenderly recounts Fadhel’s tragic journey and the challenges of exile since his arrival from Tunisia. Exile is also experienced by the director himself, who, stripping away fiction’s embellishments, reveals—mirroring his character—what seems to be at the heart of this Renaissance: a tribute to an artist, a gesture of love, and the possibility, through cinema, of reinventing oneself.

Louise Martin Papasian

In the presence of Claire Lasolle, member of the FIDMarseille selection committee.

Date: 28.02.2025 at 8:30pm
Place: La Gaya Scienza « espace d’exploration artistique et poétique », Nice
9 bis, rue Dalpozzo – Nice