Another Other

Another Other juxtaposes the interrogations of two Black American figures by white state officials. On screen, we watch Lieutenant Smith, a police officer portrayed by Wesley Snipes in Rising Sun (1993); while we hear the voice of Claudine Gay, the 30th president of Harvard University — the first Black woman president in its 387-year history. Gay was accused by the U.S. government of fostering antisemitism on campus during the autumn 2023 protests against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

This formal experiment in image, sound, and subtitle dissects the language of Smith and Gay to uncover the roles they strive to maintain within the white institutions they serve. By tailoring their speech and conforming to the expected codes — even when those codes veer into violence and corruption — both subjects reveal the cost of representation within systems built to exclude them. Bex Oluwatoyin Thompson delves into language games, coded vocabulary, and state-sanctioned newspeak to confront us with the rhetorical machinery of both the interrogators and the interrogated. A piercing, formally elegant film that lays bare the structures of domination at the heart of American history.

Aurélien Marsais

Another Other, 2025