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I have recently learned to think without the camera: to free myself from the result, to give voice first to what is happening deep within myself, far from my learned identity. To reconnect with instinct, by silencing the noise.

For some time now, I have been carrying out a quest toward that space within me where I can simply be. A place buried beneath the accumulation of learnings made since childhood, of labels worn from adolescence and of wrappings put on in adulthood. This place, where words become secondary, expresses itself on its own. I am learning to dialogue with it, so that these conversations become compasses toward future paths.

I have long questioned my place in expressing myself about my cultural identity. I still question it, in all truth. For three years, to go beyond my own experience and better understand myself, I have instead decided to use this need for expression to open spaces for dialogue. I had the chance to make it into a film, then to accompany it in meeting young people who also ask themselves these same questions: “how to define oneself with a fragmented identity?” and “do I also have a place here?”. During these exchanges, words held back since childhood come out for the first time, freeing speech and allowing one to feel a little less alone.

This identity conversation, I find it precious and important, but also, at times, paralyzing. Does an identity really limit itself to the descriptive words that one comes to carry or to choose?

In recent years, I have received on several occasions: “beautiful project, but come back to see us when you have one that deals with your diversity”. It led me to ask myself if the real struggle would not be to learn to allow oneself to free from this expectation, from this pressure to express oneself from an assigned and expected identity. One day, I hope, we will have succeeded in creating a world where these interior spaces will be more accessible, where we will have deconstructed the expectations placed on our expression. Because giving oneself permission is perhaps the greatest form of resistance.

At the moment, I am working on things that come from deep within and that I allow myself to explore simply because they resonate. I place here a few fragments that I have slowly gathered over the past year. Notes, images, sounds collected, which have helped me to build myself.

“I have a page of notes that I must now figure out what they mean. Is it necessary to bring more noise into the world? Better remain quiet, if I’m uncertain.”

• Swimming in the icy waters of the river, autumn, 2024

“The years follow one another and I find myself being less and less inhabited by your ghost. I still feel it just as present. I know that you have never left me. Now, I have learned to delimit a space that belongs to me. I understand a little better what composes me, what defines me and how it evolves slowly. I see better the paths that lead toward you. I have many questions. One day, I will move toward you with a more unrestrained step, on the trails of this dense forest that you left me, toward your truth. Why did you choose these paths? What did you carry on your back, before placing it on mine?”

• Cold winter, shut indoors in Montreal under ten feet of snow, 2025

“Laughter, gazes lost in infinite landscapes like the faces of our friends. Sensations whispered into our ears by the wind, sounds that fall asleep deep within us after having accomplished their mission of carrying the world to us. The cold of a night dive, the caress of sand on our back, the taste of blueberries and cranberries. Taking the time to look at one another. Conversations that make us feel exactly where we should be. The search for a family outside the one that bears its name by blood. Learning to say goodbye to those things that, forever, will remain within us as the foundation of who we will become. This gentleness is a protest. It is a revolution through which we extend a hand toward ourselves in order to better extend it toward the other.”

• Automatic writing, Îles-de-la-Madeleine, 2025

“Running in the mounds. Being lashed by the rain, taking flight with the wind. Playing tag, bursting into laughter, returning to the warmth of the factory – completely soaked.”

• Memory written so as not to be forgotten, 2025

“Ends of chapters. Small booklets made of fragments of paths.”

• Return to Montreal after two months away, first light of an autumn day, 2025

Stills from Au-delà des vagues

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Chadi Bennani