| Azra Thakur |
No Fear, No Die plays at the Trylon Cinema from Sunday, April 13th, through Tuesday, April 15th. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
Claire Denis sets the tone of her second feature film, No Fear, No Die (1990) from the start: in the middle of night a young Isaach de Bankolé and Alex Descas are at the forefront of establishing their lives in Paris. De Bankolé is reflecting on a passage from a book, whispering (inexplicably to either himself, the audience, or so he might come across cooler than he already appears to be) while he drives across France. The handheld camera takes in De Bankolé grooving along to Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier” from the backseat, the dark roads ahead illuminated by headlights. No Fear No Die is a stylish film that takes place mostly at night, a film about the relationship between two acquaintances, two coworkers who develop an intimacy and awareness and understanding of one another that can only develop in the workplace.
I’ve been wary of referring to these relationships as friendships, though there is a friendly undercurrent, and friendship often establishes itself once an employer is out of the picture. But while there is a common employer, this bond between coworkers is profound. Indeed these bonds compel colleagues to remain with an employer sometimes far longer than they might otherwise. We do not realize how special our relationships are with our coworkers, until they are no longer part of our lives. All of it set in nineties France with its colonial baggage under the surface, until the simple façade Denis has lulled the audience into shatters.
Claire Denis has often discussed the centrality of her relationships with collaborators—these connections are central to her ability to make films. The human connections viewers see on screen are grounded in the real relationships Denis has with her cast and crew. Denis had a long working collaboration with her cinematographer Agnès Godard, starting with her first feature film Chocolat (1988). Alex Descas also appears throughout a number of Denis films, starting with No Fear, No Die aging gracefully throughout. There is a deep gravity and seriousness that Descas exudes on screen. Descas has maybe always been this man, I realized as I remembered watching him in other Denis films. I can’t remember where I read this—the camera has an uncanny ability to capture an actor’s essence, no matter how well an actor inhabits their roles across different films. The lens is still able to perceive an actor’s uniqueness and relay it to the audience. This is what endears us to our favorite actors, what we recognize on-screen film after film, character after character, what eludes us as we attempt to describe this connection in writing but what we recognize instantly when an actor appears before us.
One of the more pleasurable aspects of watching a film is discovering something about a character on screen, witnessing their motivations and emotions through their behaviors and interactions, without an over-explanatory narrative telling the viewer everything that is happening and why it is happening (as has unfortunately become commonplace with many Netflix-produced films and series, for example). Denis is particularly skilled at this, as her camera (or Godard’s) observes her characters unhurriedly, allowing the viewer to interpret and make meaning of the film on their own. Agnès Godard describes this “mysteriousness” between viewer and character in an interview with Reverse Shot, where she reflects on a scene between father and daughter (played by Descas and Mati Diop, respectively) in 35 Shots of Rum (2008):
“And each one of them is secret. You are the witness of a very intimate moment with strong love, but they are separate and very mysterious. And of course, mystère [mystery] is an essential element in cinema because you want to know about something mysterious, so you want to look. It’s an essential chemical agent to make a link between the fiction and the audience. And that’s why, if the mystère is there, you don’t need that much more.”
Colonialism is common in the background of many Denis films—France’s history of colonization in Africa, the experience of immigrants in France. Her films are beautifully composed, inhabit a pleasing color palette, the characters are carefully styled, music choices well-considered, when sudden shocking instances of violence shatter the comfort Denis has lulled viewers into. Denis often cites Franz Fanon’s work and ideas that underlie her films, that are on her mind. The original sound in the film is by renowned South African jazz musician Abdullah Ibrahim—the memorable main theme Calypso Minor repeats throughout and reminds viewers that even in 1990, colonialism was active and not post. Ibrahim lived in exile from South Africa for decades, as his liberatory jazz music threatened the South African apartheid state.
Colonialism in the background is perhaps what has made Denis films palatable for European and American audiences—it’s there but unobtrusive and subtle, where beauty dominates on screen. I’m suggesting the idea of her films being more palatable for the audience with a deep respect: her films are well executed—the audience might not catch all of the underlying themes from Fanon if they haven’t sought out additional interviews with her or her cast.
No Fear No Die was recently restored, as was Raoul Peck’s personal essay-documentary film Lumumba: Death of a Prophet (1991)—both films were difficult to watch before their restorations, both told at a similar time in history. The colonialism explored in Lumumba is more personal, more at the surface, as Peck describes the history of the ascent and assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of Congo using archival and home videos. Also more recently, Mati Diop’s documentary Dahomey (2024) examines colonial history as France returns a select number of cultural artifacts to Benin. Diop tells the story in part through giving voice to the artifacts, and listening to youth in Benin in discussion of France’s attempts at rectifying their colonial plunder. How do we make sense of Denis films in 2025, when there is more access to documentary and feature films by Black and African directors? The lines between feature and documentary film, archival and personal history have blurred in novel ways on screen in the many films directed by Black and African directors since 2020, in ways that allow for colonialism to be at the forefront that differs from Denis’s depictions in the nineties and early 2000s. I don’t have a good answer to how to make sense of this at the moment, besides encouraging viewers to seek out these films and consider the question.
I turned to reading a passage myself, like de Bankole at the beginning of the film, as I struggled to make sense of No Fear, No Die for Perisphere at a time of multiple disasters taking place today: the constancy of apocalyptic scenes of genocide in Gaza, cruelty towards immigrants in the United States, a disdain for the working class pummeled with economic and layoff chaos around the world. Colonialism is ever present in our lives today, its horrifying imagery captured in real-time for everyone to see. One of the thousands of social media posts shuffling across my screen recently referenced Toni Morrison’s compelling understanding of our current political moment. I found the passage in The Source of Self Regard to read in full. Morrison said this about Home in her 2009 convocation at Oberlin College:
“the destiny of the twenty-first century will be shaped by the possibility or the collapse of a shareable world. The question of cultural apartheid and/or cultural integration is at the heart of all governments and informs our perception of the ways in which governance and culture compel the exoduses of peoples (voluntarily or driven)… How do individuals resist or become complicit in the process of alienizing others’ demonization… By welcoming immigrants, or importing slaves into their midst for economic reasons and relegating their children to a modern version of the ‘undead.’… Such are the consequences of persistent demonization; such is the harvest of shame.”
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon
Didn’t “Choclat” come out in 1988?
That’s right! Can an editor make the correction to the text, please?
updated!