A Hand that Holds a Machete: Race and the Representation of the Displaced in Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan

This article explores the norms, spaces, positions and conditions of visibility for non-white refugees and migrants as well as white non-refugee characters in Dheepan (Jacques Audiard, 2015), a film which received much praise for its humane representation of refugees and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Through a close analysis, this article aims to demonstrate number of recurring elements that are often determined by imaginations of race in European film productions that represent refugees and migrants. Analysing the film, along with its production and reception, this study shows how European whiteness remains the invisible norm of non-violence, while the non-whiteness of the displaced remains outside this norm and is visibly and unquestionably locked into acts, positions, objects (holding a machete) and spaces of violence and crisis: the jungle, the refugee camp, the banlieue, the darkness of a cellar.