Big in Vietnam
Mati Diop
2011 - 27 min - Couleur - France

Right in the middle of a dappled forest on the outskirts of Marseille, a team is shooting an adaptation of Liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos, but the actor playing Valmont disappears. In her search for him the director comes across places, bars, streets in a Marseille that echoes the Vietnam she comes from. As she moves from one place to another, underground liaisons rise to the surface, while the shoot continues all on its ownsome, virtually without her. Mati Diop, whose acclaimed Atlantiques brought us a unique odyssey, which today links in with the deportation of Black Africans in the past, paints a different portrait in Big in Vietnam – that of a woman between two worlds, between her desires and her memories, wandering through a cosmopolitan Marseille with a ghostly colonial past. This storywithin- a-story allows the director not just to underline the interplay of cinematic themes, but also to highlight what is off camera. (Nicolas Feodoroff, FIDMarseille 2012)