L’in-ouï (The Unheard) is a film research project by Narimane Mari that explores colonial rupture and postcolonial imagination through the language of orality. Departing from Édouard Glissant and L.-G. Damas, the project addresses the ‘disaster’ of French colonial Africa – its fractured landscapes, imposed language, and erased voices. Working from France, Mari examines how Africa is seen, fantasised, and misheard by collecting unheard narratives transmitted through speech, rhythm, and sound rather than written history. The film unfolds through two traverses: a visual layer that shifts between documentary, theatrical, and hallucinatory forms, and an autonomous sound composition rooted in prosody and oral tradition. Rejecting linear chronology, L’in-ouï seeks encounter rather than explanation, proposing cinema as a space of resonance, reciprocity, and shared ground.
Narimane Mari is a French-Algerian filmmaker and producer whose genre-defying films have been presented at documenta 14, MoMA, the Locarno Film Festival, FID Marseille, and major international festivals.
