Mati Diop and Manon Lutanie film a ballet-trained dancer on the cusp of adolescence, assembling a unique portrait set to an original composition from Devonté Hynes (also known as the skilled multi-instrumentalist behind Blood Orange) commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. The latter commissioned the film and composition with the independent producer Liquid Music, premiering both live in 2022.

Oumy Bruni Garrel takes center-stage in Naked Blue, filmed by Diop and Lutanie with Handycams that capture the quicksilver nature of her choreography. Oumy, daughter of a close friend of the filmmakers, exhibits an unbridled sense of passion as she dances around the blue studio, her skeleton-unitard often vanishing into a blur as she twirls and lunges across the closed-off space. Reflecting on the film, Diop and Lutanie have noted that Hynes’ accompanying composition mirrors the “magnetism, cohesion, and radical autonomy” of Oumy’s movements.

“The fragile, ambiguous nature of the images evokes archival footage of rehearsals for a school show or film shoot. It also gestures to the transition from childhood to adolescence, wakefulness to trance, sadness to its overcoming — as well as the interstitial, tenuous nature of such passages. It is also a portrait of Oumy at a specific moment in her life, a moment that is deeply moving to us and that we wanted to capture.” MATI DIOP AND MANON LUTANIE

The decision to film in a blue studio was natural to Diop and Lutanie; according to the latter, “we didn’t even talk about it.” Their previous collaboration — Liberian Boy, about a young boy rehearsing the steps to “Billie Jean” — was shot in a studio painted green. The azure studio evokes the ocean — a leitmotif in Diop’s films — and presents Oumy with an expansive backdrop against which her fragile collapses and sudden swells disclose an internal fluctuation between strength and sadness.

Mati Diop and Manon Lutanie have co-directed two dance-related short films. Diop is an award-winning filmmaker best known for Atlantics (Grand Jury Prize Winner at Cannes in 2019) and Dahomey (Golden Bear Winner at the Berlinale in 2024). In addition to her practice as a filmmaker, Lutanie also founded the Paris-based independent publisher Éditions Lutanie, which has released books featuring writing, dialogue, and photography from numerous artists.

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer.