Amandine Gay

Director, producer, author, activist, Amandine Gay divides her time between research and creation. Following Speak Up – her first self-produced and self-distributed film which gives voice to 24 Black francophone women – released in French, Belgian and Swiss theaters in 2017 and in Canada in 2018; she releases a second feature length documentary, A Story of One’s Own. This archival film on transnational and transracial adoption from the perspective of 5 adult adoptees was released in French theaters on June 23, 2021, swiss theaters on February 2nd and at the Cinémathèque québécoise on August 26, 2022. She regularly appears as a speaker about of filmmaking, Afrofeminism, intersectionality or adoption. In 2018, she founded “Adoptees Awareness Month”, a series of events taking place every year in November between France, Switzerland, Belgium and Quebec to allow adoptees to flip the script and reclaim the narrative. In 2020, she’s awarded the Ted Little Prize, an annual award of $500 presented to a Center for Oral History and Digital Storytelling community affiliate. The award acknowledges significant oral history-based research, activism, research-creation, arts-based storytelling, and/or creative, place-based work.
In 2021, she publishes her first book, A Chocolate Doll, an autobiographical essay on adoption with editions La Découverte (France) and Remue-Ménage (Quebec).
In 2023, she’s awarded the Jean-Marc Vallée Starting Grant, a 1000$ research prize from the ARRQ for her third feature The Invisible Knapsack. In 2024, Ballroom, her first docuseries (co-written and directed by Amandine) is in production.
You can follow her in French and in English on social media: @orpheonegra