The Anxieties of Transnationalism: Reception of Immigration Films

Abstract

Here we examine closely issues of production and reception of Greek migration films across national borders in order to further discuss questions of cultural identity. The chapter opens with Constantinos Giannaris’s Hostage/Omiros (2005), its hostile reception at home and celebration by Albanians in Greece and Albania. Secondly, the author addresses the obstacles that director Angeliki Antoniou encountered in claiming the ‘certificate of Greek nationality’ for her film Eduart (2006) and argues that both films showcase in their trajectories prevailing anxieties around the ownership of media. Indeed, a careful look into the films’ creative context opens our eyes to a culturally rich and diverse cinema that confuses the boundaries of a nation’s cinema and overall film culture, proposing new and exciting routes of cultural production. The author thus aims to contest national frameworks of inquiry and to propose a more inclusive definition of a national cinema.