Eritrean-born, Netherlands-raised RIMON is an artist firmly on the ascent. With an innate confidence and clear talent, she won us over the minute we heard her Soul Train-inspired debut single “Grace” back in 2018. In May, the 23-year-old released her second EP, a follow-up to 2018’s BBYGIRL FOCU$ called I Shine, U Shine. While the R&B six-tracker is about surrendering to love and overcoming trust issues, the accompanying short movie — “WHAT THEY CALLED ME”, directed by fellow Brussels-based creatives BLEUNUIT and premiering with us today — evolved to have a whole other narrative. “It’s more about identity and self,” Rimon explains.
The film opens with Rimon, speaking in her mother tongue, reflecting on her name. “My name is Rimon,” she says, over a shot of a young girl, her as a child. “Back home in Eritrea, it was given by my father. The concept of name is strange. It’s handed out at birth and you’re supposed to carry it with you for the rest of your life. Rimon was given to me but I never accepted it.” She has a good point. Originally a Hebrew name given to boys, she tells us that Rimon means ‘pomegranate’, and that for some time during her upbringing she identified with the more feminine ‘Rimona’. “It was more familiar to people, and I just didn’t like how my real name sounded.”
“In the movie, I use this as a metaphor for how I didn’t accept my life circumstances, so I translate this feeling into disguising my name. I attach a name onto my whole existence in every sequence of the movie.” The project, Rimon tells us, is based on a mixture of fiction and reality: a story of falling in love, feeling caged and finding freedom in somebody new. “But the real narrative,” she says, “is how I completely lose myself in every person I’m with, how I adapt myself to that person in the most extreme ways to the point of self-destruction, caused by unspoken childhood traumas.”
Through claiming different names and adopting different personas across almost 17 minutes of epic and very aesthetically-pleasing highs and lows — late night dancing, masked museum robberies, going on the run, setting shit on fire — Rimon’s character comes to the realisation that she lost her true self somewhere along the way, ending in a rebirth of sorts.
“I finally reclaim my given name again and start a journey of self-acceptance and healing.” It’s a story of identity — of embracing your own, whatever that might look like. “Whether it’s your name or your sexuality,” Rimon says. “But for me personally, it’s also about reconnecting with yourself after years of running away from your problems; of diving deep into suppressed feelings and growing, by yourself.” These days, the young artist goes by her given name. “I identify as RIMON. It was given to me for a reason and I carry it with pride today.”