Alice Diop’s new film opens with a stare: a woman, painted by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, lying in recline for his Grande Odalisque . Her gray eyes gaze blankly into the viewer’s. For the next eight minutes, the camera cuts from one porcelain-skinned woman to another, painted finely and even lovingly, their likenesses portrayed in beauty and perpetuity in the halls of the Louvre. Their images are meant for admiration. All the while, Diop’s voice recites a French translation of “Voyage of the Sable Venus,” by Robin Coste Lewis, a poem consisting entirely of “titles, catalogue entries, or exhibit descriptions of western art objects in which a Black female figure is present.”

The camera follows as actress Kayije Kagame wanders the halls of the hallowed museum, staring at these famed wor

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