Multi-Facial
1995 · 20m · USA
Directed by Vin Diesel
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, tense
A struggling multiracial actor in New York cycles through a series of auditions, code-switching across ethnicities as casting directors try to slot him into a 'type'. Written, directed, scored by and starring Vin Diesel before his breakout.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Before Diesel became a franchise engine, he made something genuinely strange and unflinching — a one-man deconstruction of racial casting that refuses the comfort of a tidy thesis. It's the kind of formal risk that should've gotten him taken seriously as a filmmaker, and the fact that it didn't is the real scandal.
A formally rigorous interrogation of identity and labor that situates itself squarely in the lineage of essay-films and performance art pieces grappling with race and institutional systems; Diesel's decision to perform every audition variant himself becomes a structural argument about interchangeability and typecasting.
The singular choice here is that Diesel doesn't wink at the performance — he inhabits each audition identity with the same searching intensity, and it's that refusal to distance himself from the code-switching that makes the film's anatomy of the casting room feel authentic rather than didactic.
Reviews
A fascinating look at tribulations of a struggling actor, Multi-Facial is also an impressive piece of filmmaking.
The short film that launched Vin Diesel's entire career — accepted to Cannes 1995 and seen by Steven Spielberg, who wrote a role for Diesel in Saving Private Ryan after watching it.
Festivals
- Cannes Film Festival 1995