French-language Road Cinema: Borders, Diasporas, Migration and 'New Europe'
Michael GottOver the past two decades road cinema has become an increasingly popular form of expression for European directors. Focusing on a corpus of films from France, Belgium and Switzerland, including works by Ismaël Ferroukhi, Bouli Lanners, Aki Kaurismäki and Jacqueline Audry amongst many others, French-language Road Cinema contends that nowhere is the impulse to remap the spaces and identities of ‘New Europe’ more evident than in French-language cinema. Drawing on mobility studies, cultural geography and film theory, this innovative work sketches out the flexible yet distinctive parameters of contemporary French-language road cinema, and argues for an understanding of the ‘road movie’ not as a genre but as a thematic and formal template that crosses cinematic categories to bring together a wide array of films that narrate the movements of migrants, tourists and business executives.
Key Features
- The first monograph to focus on transnational French-language (from or co-produced by France, Belgium and Switzerland) European road cinema
- Each chapter analyses key formal characteristics of a carefully chosen selection of films through the optic of a significant cultural or political issue facing ‘New Europe’
- Examines the unique formal and thematic qualities of French-language European road movies in relationship to American and European traditions
- Case studies examine well-known films, as well as those that have not yet received scholarly attention but are commercially available with English subtitles
- Compares and contrasts more positive vantage points on cinematic mobility with recent migrant cinema
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