Adoption told bluntly. After open voicean excellent documentary that received the Audience Award at the RIDM in 2017 which explores the identity of black women, the French author and sociologist Amandine Gay also strikes hard and proposes this time to consider international adoption in A story of its own.
Adopted herself, the filmmaker has chosen to deconstruct the clichés one by one. Of the myth of parents set up as saviors, of a binary vision of the West and the Third World, or of benefactor institutions, there is therefore no question in his fascinating feature film where each word spoken, each image that scrolls by captive.
To do this, the director gives the floor to five adults who were adopted in France during their childhood by white families. Whether they are from South Korea, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Australia or Rwanda, Joohee, Mathieu, Céline, Anne-Charlotte and Niyongira have in common an adoption experience that one would think is atypical. At first glance. In reality, all of them have mostly been uprooted, taken away from their families from an early age. Although they do not question either the love they have for their adoptive parents or the act of adoption as such, these people entrust Amandine Gay and her camera with their memories and their experiences, but also their felt, of a complex identity construction and of the assimilation of a culture which is not their own.
The intimate that becomes political
One of the interests ofA story of its own is particularly the focus on the emotional and psychological impacts and injuries of adopted children. Beyond simple intimate stories, illustrated by photographs, videos, letters and archival drawings, their testimonies are eminently political in what they indicate about our societies. Personal stories that thus become a collective story.
In summary, we understand thanks to A story of its own that even today, racialized adoptees suffer this double penalty, this in-between, where they are never considered perfectly French, perfectly foreign. Others, like Mathieu or Niyongira, also expose the malaise that overwhelmed them during their adolescence. Whether it is a visceral fear of abandonment or more severe mental disorders, the weight of secrecy inevitably weighs on their emotional development.
Finally, A story of its ownbecause it is full of nuance and subtlety, reveals those destinies that always end up being luminous, like Anne-Charlotte, Mathieu and Niyongira, who were able to forge ties with their biological family one day, or Céline and Joohee, who knew how to tame the culture of the countries where they were born.