Black beauties

They are French, African, Black. These women share how they experience their beauty and difference in France, where some were born and others have chosen to live. They master the art of presenting their bodies according to an ideal of beauty—a standard inherited from ancestral traditions, which they have adapted to contemporary French culture.

Hairstyling, makeup, and afternoons at beauty salons reveal rites of integration into French society. For these women in search of individuality, aesthetic care and soul care intertwine. By following them into the intimacy of these spaces dedicated to the body, we feel as though we are discovering, for the first time and from a fresh perspective, the new generation of Black French women. These enterprising young women have learned to balance their inherited culture with their acquired culture in the image they project of their own identity.

This documentary gives them a voice at a time when many lament the exclusion of the Black community in French media. It proposes to approach integration as a lived experience, a daily and individual journey where one learns to inhabit their body and its differences while affirming their identity.