Simply Black

Political, neat, edgy, stirring and incredibly funny, "Tout Simplement Noir" transcends its nature as a sketch film to offer a fascinating portrait of a France in the midst of identity introspection.

This movie aims high with a satyrical discourse take on the various, complex forms of French identity, history of racism and people who feel like a failure in spite of their efforts. The main character is a failed comedian who stumbles into human rights activism on his quest for success in French showbusiness. Soon he finds out he's way over his head in uncharted waters that don't have a lot to do with human rights, but publicity, appropriation and money. The movie demasks activism as something exclusive instead of inclusive and a battlefield of minorities for center stage in social media and politics. Reducing a greater cause as means to an end that only benefits the main protagonists, it's simultaneously entertaining and saddening. Because JP wants to play a game he's completely unfamiliar with and soon finds himself in a crossfire between hooligans, racism, activism and showbusiness that uses humanitarian causes as merely another form of PR. JP turns out to be completely illiterate in terms of social intelligence. You almost feel sorry for him but then again, he just wanted to succeed in showbusiness. The humiliating encounter with the comedienne in her backstage room was painful to watch, but it's a great depiction of the precarious reality of profession.

I laughed during the whole movie and couldn't disagree with any of the messages of this movie. This cleverly shows all the issues of organizing a black man protest iin France in front of us. I had never seen any media showing how diverse the "black" category is this well.

Very powerful message delivered in a very natural manner.

Alot of the content out there shoves the theme/issue in your face to the point that it gets annoying to watch it.

However, Zadi does it with so much humanity that it resonates with you. This is something that'll stay with me.

100% recommend to anyone, irrespective of skin color, to give this a go.

I found this difficult to follow since the dialogue is unforgivingly French and thus the speed of it was not conducive for reading all the lines with subtitles. Would have been better for the English release if they dubbed the whole movie in English, like they did to reel us in with the English dubbed trailer.