‘“Do the right thing”: encounters with undocumented migrants in contemporary European Cinema’

Abstract

This article analyzes the encounters between European citizens and undocumented migrants in three European migration films – Eternity and a Day (Theo Angelopoulos, 1998, France/ Italy/ Greece/ Germany), Welcome (Philippe Lioret, 2009, France) and Terraferma (Emanuele Crialese, 2011, Italy/ France) – in order to explore a paternalistic tendency in European cinema’s representation of migration from the 1990s and onward. As these films shot by European filmmakers raise awareness about the predicament of child-migrants, the challenges of life in refugee camps, and quotidian forms of discrimination, they also utilize the Other-in-need as an avatar in order to construct a compassionate European identity, one firmly devoted to humanitarian ideals. In these Southern European films, migrant characters and their agency are taken down to he goal of survival facing extremely dangerous situations to make it to a utopian space in Northern Europe. While spectators observe the magnitude of the migrants’ plight, victimization disenfranchises their communities and reinforces their status as precarious subjects fated to permanently orbit the borders of Europe.

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