Amandine Gay

Amandine Gay is a filmmaker, afrofeminist activist, and scholar who divides her time between research and creative work. According to her, reclaiming the narrative is an act of emancipation. After Speak Up: Make Your Way (Ouvrir la voix), her first film which gives voice to 24 French-speaking Afro-descendant women, she directed a second documentary, A Story of One's Own (Une histoire à soi), focused on international adoption from the perspective of five adopted individuals, now adults. Amandine Gay regularly gives lectures on Afrofeminism, intersectionality, and adoption. In 2015, she wrote the preface for the first French translation of bell hooks’ classic Ain’t I a Woman?. She is also featured as an author in several collective works. In 2018, she founded “Adoptee Month” (le Mois des Adopté·es), a series of events held annually in November across France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Quebec to help adoptees reclaim their stories. In 2021, she chose to share her own experience in an autobiographical essay on adoption, Une poupée en chocolat, published by La Découverte (France) and Remue-Ménage (Quebec). In 2025, she directed her first documentary series, Ballroom, an immersive look into the LGBTQIA+ and racialized community of Greater Paris, brought together through ballroom culture.