París · Radical Film Network 2026
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Baraka / بركة — Memory and Images
15 June 2026 // Radical Film Network Conference 2026 //
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, ParisWithin the framework of "Fronts en construction / Building Fronts. Radical Film Network Conference 2026", OVNI will present a session dedicated to the Moroccan filmmaker Dalila Ennadre through the screening of three of her films:
El Batalett. Femmes de la Medina (2000)
J'ai tant aimé (2008)
Jean Genet, notre Père-des-Fleurs (2021)We decided to revisit the work of Dalila Ennadre because we believe she was a visionary filmmaker whose work did not receive the attention or recognition it deserved at the time. It is often said that time allows us to look again at certain artistic gestures from another perspective; however, the singularity of her gaze, her way of filming and her relationship with the people she filmed remain largely understudied.
Our connection with her work began in 2006, when we invited Dalila to Barcelona as part of the OVNI Video Showcase, within the programme The Colonial Dream / Autonomous Zones. The programme brought together videos, independent documentaries and media archaeologies around colonialism and its contemporary mutations: occupation and destruction of other worlds and cultures, systematic exploitation of resources, real estate violence, colonial tourism or forced migrations, but also autonomous ways of living, perceiving and creating communal and inner realities.
The idea of “autonomous zones” crossed the programme as the possibility of imagining spaces not entirely subjected to logics of control, representation and domination. Places of everyday resistance, care, transmission and shared experience. Over time we understood that this dimension was deeply present in Dalila’s cinema.
Our encounter with "El Batalett" profoundly moved us for precisely this reason. We discovered a way of filming from within, through proximity and trust, far removed from the stereotyped representations that so often accompany narratives about migration, marginality or Arab women in Western imaginaries. In her films, domestic spaces, intimate conversations and forms of community emerge as small autonomous zones of listening and dignity in the face of the symbolic and political violence of the outside world.
In Dalila’s films, the people being filmed do not appear as objects of observation, but as active presences who build together with her a shared space of speech and memory.
We believe this is a necessary moment to return to her images. Six years after her passing, we feel the need to open spaces to share her work and accompany it as, probably, she herself would have liked: through closeness, listening and presence.
At OVNI we work through research and archives, but we understand both as living spaces. We use networks, while trying not to become trapped within their dynamics of speed and accumulation. We are more interested in encounters than visibility, more interested in building relationships than in the massive circulation of content. We seek to create sensitive communities around images, where shared experience, conversation and transmission may still have a place.
Perhaps this is why Dalila’s cinema still feels profoundly contemporary. Her films do not seek to occupy the center, but rather to remain close to people, accompany them and allow images to breathe alongside them.
Today, almost twenty years later, we feel the need to return to her images from a present marked by new forms of border violence, exclusion and dehumanization. Revisiting Dalila Ennadre’s work also means asking ourselves how images can continue to be spaces of listening, transmission and shared resistance.
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