Frames of isolation: Recording memory and loss in Mati Diop's In My Room
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Date
2026-09-04
Authors
Bernard, Brittany
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Film and Screen Media, University College Cork
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Abstract
This article investigates French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop’s engagement with collective and personal memory in her short documentary, In My Room (2020), made during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Drawing on Michael Renov’s notion of domestic ethnography, as well as a recontextualisation of the “home movie” as historical testimony, I argue that Diop’s framing of domestic space and its markers of personal identity bear witness to the shared memory of the pandemic. At the same time, the film addresses issues of historical trauma and diasporic experience that recur throughout Diop’s oeuvre. Echoing Chantal Akerman’s 2006 essay film Là-bas, Diop’s documentary infuses the domestic imagery of her Paris apartment with a diegetic soundscape of quotidian ambient noise, supplemented by a series of voice recordings of her grandmother, Maji, as she loses her memory before her death. In its rigorous attention to windows and framing, in combination with oral testimony, In My Room emerges as a layered cinematic mediation of memory, loss, and historical trauma.
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Bernard, B. (2026) 'Frames of isolation: Recording memory and loss in Mati Diop’s In My Room', Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 31, pp. 69–83. https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.31.04