Valentin Noujaïm
Interview
Valentin Noujaïm (b. 1991, French-Lebanese) graduated from the Screenwriting Department of La Fémis in Paris and was a guest student at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Noujaïm's work challenges dominant narratives in society, shedding light on the lives of individuals and communities historically marginalised by systemic discrimination. The fantasised worlds he creates through his films also underline his commitment to explore different formats: 16mm film, archives, digital footage, and special effects. Noujaïm will present his first institutional solo show in 2025.
His films have been selected in numerous festivals, including CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel, IFFR, DocLisboa, BAFICI, DokuFest, BlackStar Film Festival et Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur. His work has also been presented in several group exhibitions: Nîmes Triennale (2024), Museo Madre (2024), Magasins Généraux (2023), CNAC Magasin (2022), Salon de Montrouge (2022), Air de Paris Gallery (2022), Exo Exo Gallery (2022), Saatchi Gallery (2021), among others. His works are part of the collections of the CNAP, KADIST, FRAC Bretagne and Lafayette Anticipations.
Q How did you get into film? Why film as a medium?
My journey into film began with a deep fascination for creating images, for crafting visuals that feel alive and immediate. Initially, I believed my drive was primarily about the visuals themselves. I wanted to construct images that felt absent whether reimagined archives or visuals missing from the landscape of French cinema and visual art. I felt a need to create something new, to challenge familiar aesthetics, and build spaces that resonate visually and emotionally.
As I delved deeper into the process, I realised my true focus was not just on the images, but on the characters inhabiting these worlds. My interest shifted to the figures within the frame, the unique individuals whose stories I wanted to unfold. Today, I see filmmaking as a way to explore human presence, capturing portraits that linger beyond the screen. The act of inventing characters and working with actors to bring them to life has become the heart of my practice.
There’s a strong pull toward performance and character study that continues to grow within me. While film is my primary medium, I could imagine expanding into other forms, perhaps performance art or theatre, which also allows for that same intimate exploration of character and identity.
Q Your film Oceania blends colonial, queer, and Arab narratives through powerful storytelling. Could you talk a bit about working with these intersections in your films?
Oceania is, at its core, a film about erasure, the deliberate exclusion of certain social groups from France’s official narrative. I approach this with a Marxist perspective, both in terms of historical analysis and class struggle. French history has been curated to honour the powerful, systematically erasing Arabs, Black communities, queer people, lesbians, trans people, and the working class. Oceania, perhaps my most personal film to date, follows a young Lebanese teenager who, out of boredom, sneaks into the home of his recently deceased elderly neighbour. Through this man’s archives, he discovers a history he was never taught, a story concealed both in school and within his own family circle.
Through these archives, he uncovers a hidden narrative blending an Arab Marxist movement, figures like Ghassan Kanafani, the first Pan-African Festival in Algiers, the Black Panthers, the AIDS crisis, and an intimate love story between two men. This experience is transformative for him; it’s his first encounter with a history that resists erasure, challenging the dominant narratives that sought to bury it. With the ongoing genocide in Palestine and attacks on Lebanon, I felt an urgent need to tell a story of love, a love story rooted in the social and political histories of Lebanon, Algeria, and France.
By intertwining these elements, the film becomes a tribute to resilience, to lives and histories that persist against a backdrop of erasure. It brings forth a legacy intentionally hidden, shedding light on narratives of resistance, and celebrating an intersectional legacy that is both profoundly personal and universally significant. This exploration of marginalised identities—through archival material, personal memory, and romance, is my way of honouring silenced voices and rewriting them into our collective consciousness.
Q What’s the most challenging aspect of filmmaking for you?
Money and time are the biggest challenges. Filmmaking has become increasingly difficult as budgets are constantly squeezed, often forcing us to work at a relentless pace. My favourite projects are those where I had the freedom to follow my script with minimal compromise, where the process felt uninhibited. Yet the reality of filmmaking is often the opposite: working conditions are gruelling, people aren’t paid fairly, and we’re all pushed to work intense, long hours to make it happen.
Beyond practical constraints, there’s a broader issue with film distribution, which, outside the contemporary art world, remains conservative and elitist. This makes it even harder to reach audiences with stories that challenge traditional narratives or conventions. For me, the challenge is not only fighting for the resources and time to create but also for a system that’s more open to diverse and daring stories, so that films reflecting a broader range of voices and realities can be seen.
Q Your films La Défense Volume I and Volume II explore the corporate architecture, sterile aesthetics, and lost narratives of regeneration in this Parisian area. What about this location led you to set two films there?
La Défense is the perfect stage to explore themes of violence in a space that’s the antithesis of what most people associate with Paris. By moving away from Haussmannian architecture and traditional suburbs, I can examine France through a different lens. I see this district as a kind of French colony within its own suburb, an enclave of systemic violence wrapped in steel, glass, and concrete. This architecture and intensified neoliberal setting create a backdrop where my characters struggle to survive and find their place.
In Volume I, I used La Défense to delve into the France of the 1980s, particularly the racial segregation within Parisian nightlife affecting Arabs and Black people. The underground club setting in La Défense provided a stark counterpoint to the concrete jungle above, a place of resistance within the urban landscape. Volume II shifts focus to workplace violence within the skyscrapers’ upper floors, where power and pressure collide. The final instalment will be darker, focusing on civil war and collective paranoia, reflecting a deeper descent into the anxieties embedded within this sterile, yet hostile, environment.
Q Born in France to Egyptian and Lebanese parents, your work often draws on personal heritage, blending French colonial and postcolonial themes with semi-fictional representation. What methods do you use to achieve this?
My work often centres on the complexities of power rather than the melancholy of the diaspora. I’m more interested in how power is structured, enforced, and resisted within personal and collective histories. Growing up in France with Egyptian and Lebanese heritage, I’ve seen firsthand how these dynamics shape narratives, often determining who is remembered and who is erased. My films aim to dissect these structures through a fusion of personal memory, archival materials, and fictional storytelling.
In practice, this means using archives, photos, documents, and family stories, to create a foundation, then weaving in semi-fictional elements to reimagine histories that may be hidden or fragmented. This allows me to focus not just on nostalgia or identity but on the systems and tensions that have shaped postcolonial legacies. Techniques like layering textures, using 16mm film, and experimenting with sound design help evoke a sense of something contested or reclaimed.
Q Your work resonates with themes of resistance for non-European, marginalised, or mixed Arab heritage individuals in Western Europe. How can we ensure our stories are told amid cultural silencing and censorship?
It’s a difficult question, and I can’t say I have certainty about the future or how my work might be viewed in the coming decades. But I don’t think that’s what matters most. For me, making art is about creating something meaningful and relevant to the present, something that speaks to our times while building bridges to the past and envisioning the near future. As an artist, the most important thing is to reflect our era, producing work, whether overtly political or not, that resonates with today’s struggles and questions.
While censorship and cultural silencing are real, I no longer let them control me. I feel supported by a community of artists, thinkers, and activists who share a common purpose and a sense of family. This community strengthens my resolve and fuels my commitment to tell stories that might otherwise be suppressed. Together, we continue to push boundaries, support one another, and amplify each other’s voices. This collective resistance and solidarity keep our stories alive, even in challenging times.
Q What are your influences? Are there iconic films you revisit?
My influences span genres and eras, each offering something unique in style, mood, or approach. Alien by Ridley Scott is a film I revisit for its tension and world-building; it’s a masterclass in atmosphere and isolation. 3 Women by Robert Altman has a surreal, dreamlike quality that explores identity and reality, which I admire. I’m also drawn to Candyman, a film that examines social trauma and history in visceral, metaphorical ways.
Looking for Langston is another major influence, it’s a haunting exploration of Black and queer identity, using visual poetry to speak to heritage and memory. Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai and Dark Passage with Lauren Bacall are films I return to for their noir aesthetics, capturing paranoia, disorientation, and shifting identities. These films inspire me to push genre boundaries and create layered, evocative narratives reflecting complex identities and histories.
Q And lastly, what are you working on next?
I’m currently working on La Défense III - Demons to Diamonds, the next instalment in my La Défense series. I’m also collaborating on a film and performance project with the Manchester-based group Space Afrika, a fascinating cross-disciplinary exploration. On top of that, I’m preparing my first feature-length film, a long-term goal, and I’m excited to announce my first solo exhibition in February 2025.
Queerdirect Publishing 2024