Director Alice Diop on How the Personal Becomes Political in Her New Miu Miu Women’s Tales Film

The first thing you see in Alice Diop ’s new short film, Fragments for Venus, is a shot of Ingres’s famous Grande Odalisque, the controversial portrait of a concubine from 1814 that sits in the hallowed halls of the Louvre. Then, a series of other Old Master paintings begin to appear—Leonardo, Rembrandt, Veronese, many recognizable from museums around the world—and we begin to follow a viewer walking through the halls of this mysterious institution. At one point, the actress, Kayije Kagame, pauses in front of an empty frame, as if hinting that she may one day have her likeness memorialised on these walls.

Photo: Brigitte Lacombe

Even more striking than the masterpieces of art history you see cycling across the screen, however, is what you can hear: a voice reciting a French transla