Residue at Luminor

Merawi Gerima's first feature, Residue is a hard-hitting film that questions urban dispossession and the memory of black communities in the face of gentrification.

In Washington D.C., Jay, a young filmmaker played by Obinna Nwachukwu, returns to his childhood neighborhood with the intention of writing a screenplay. But this return quickly turns into disillusionment: the places have changed, and so have the faces. The neighborhood he once knew has been reshaped by gentrification, and old ties have frayed. Among those absent is his best friend, whose disappearance becomes the common thread of a quest haunted by erasure.

With a mise-en-scène that is both poetic and visceral, Residue deals with identity, loss and the silent struggle waged by those whom the city rejects as it gentrifies. Shot with an economy of means but a rare intensity, the film has been widely acclaimed for its narrative strength and uncompromising eye. It won the prestigious John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Born in Washington D.C., Merawi Gerima draws on his own history to create a deeply personal work. Residue is as much a social portrait as an anxious love letter to a world on the verge of erasure.

The screening will be followed by a conversation between Mélissa Dyminat, urban planning architect with the New South agency, and Sylvie Tissot, sociologist and professor in the political science department at the University of Paris-VIII.

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