Borders and migration in Urszula Antoniak’s Pomiędzy słowami/Beyond Words (2017)

ABSTRACT This article analyses the feature films of the Polish Dutch filmmaker Urszula Antoniak through the lens of border and migration studies. I argue that Antoniak’s films are characterized by an aesthetic of migration that visualizes the radical identity formation of both her migrant and non-(im)migrant figures. Antoniak’s fourth film Pomiędzy słowami/Beyond Words (2017) challenges the presumptions that underlie her own aesthetic of migration by situating her characters explicitly in the geo-political, legal, and social contexts that make radical self-regeneration possible for some and not for others. In the end, the migrants in Beyond Words remain metonyms for the redefinition of the self that is possible due to the experience of migration; however, they also recalibrate that redefinition to include community, the evasion or abdication of hegemonic oversight, as well as a new conception of what it means to be a migrant or ‘native’.