Rayane Mcirdi: Joyeuse retraite papa

Joyeuse retraite papa is Rayane Mcirdi's first institutional exhibition in Paris, presented by the Frac Île-de-France at Le Plateau, curated by Céline Poulin.

Working at the border of documentary and fiction, Mcirdi builds his films from stories, memories and anecdotes gathered from his family and from the residents of Asnières-sur-Seine and Gennevilliers, where he grew up. Drawing on narratives that move between Algeria and France, he stages these voices with cinematic precision, turning ordinary stories into material where the intimate and the collective meet. Rather than familiar depictions of the banlieue, his films give shape to rarely told memories, marked by solidarity, contradiction, humour, dreams of elsewhere and family ties.

Conceived specifically for Le Plateau, the exhibition presents the show version of Mcirdi's new film Le dernier jour de Dino, unfolding across the space as a journey through several chapters, with scenes echoing one another from room to room. Inspired by the story of the artist's own father, the film follows an apparently ordinary day: that of a factory worker's retirement after forty years on the job. Between the last gestures performed at his post, the camaraderie among colleagues and the return to his family, the day gradually reveals what it means to leave behind a world to which one has devoted a lifetime — opening onto solidarity, tenderness, nostalgia and things left unsaid, and, behind this family portrait, a deeply universal experience.