Why Biopolitics?

Abstract

Reading the medium-length film Washingtonia (2014, dir. Konstantina Kotzamani) as a metonymic allegory of the whole Weird Wave movement, this chapter then turns to theories of biopolitics. Biopolitics is presented as a valuable concept in order to comprehend the Weird Wave’s sociocultural position, as well as its films’ thematic and formal choices. A short bibliographical review of previous critical approaches to biopolitics and film is then followed by the close reading of Yorgos Zois’s medium-length Third Kind (2018). What “weird” films like those by Zois and Kotzamani present us with, it is argued, is a critical response to the condition of living in an intense biopolitical present.