Divines (2016)

“My hands are made for gold because I’m the queen of the world!” — Dounia

Divines is featured on our Top 10 Title Sequences of 2016 list.



To visitors, Paris is the city of love and lights. But there is a Paris that tourists rarely see: La Ville-Immigrée — The Immigrant City, an impoverished periphery where opportunities are few and far between, and those that appear must be seized or stolen. Glimpses of that Paris can be seen in the opening moments of Divines, Director Houda Benyamina’s timely, heart-wrenching drama about two young women coming of age in the outskirts of the French capital. The film opens with a montage of Dounia (Oulaya Amamra) and Maimouna (Déborah Lukumuena) goofing around. Shot vertically on a mobile phone, the pair record themselves smiling and laughing, dancing and mugging for the camera, aping their idols and broadcasting it to the world. These “snaps”, shared through the video messaging app Snapchat, are as much for them as anyone else — fun and fleeting projections that belie the poverty and violence that surrounds them, revealing a deep bond between the two.

Director Benyamina and Editor Loïc Lallemand assembled the opening sequence from footage shot by stars Amamra and Lukumuena. Title Designer Anaïs Mak then designed the credits to appear as on-screen captions in line with the app’s signature style. The selfie aesthetic helps to ground Divines in a level of realism that’s impossible to shake. When paired with Vivaldi’s haunting Nisi Dominus, the girls’ playful antics begin to take on a foreboding dimension. Closing with Dounia’s defiant declaration that she’s “queen of the world” and a sky high title card, it’s hard not to wonder what the future holds for these two friends.

A discussion with Divines Title Designer ANAÏS MAK and Editor LOÏC LALLEMAND.

Hi Anaïs and Loïc! Can you give us a little bit of background on yourselves?

Anaïs: I'm a graphic designer, animator, and illustrator. I graduated from Gobelins school as a graphic motion designer in September 2015. Before that I had a master’s degree in Visual Studies from EHESS (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales), which is more of a social science school.

Loïc: I was born in Lille, in Northern France. I grew up in a middle class family where culture did not hold much importance. I…

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