Caught in the Loophole: Film Aesthetics and the (Im)mobilisation of Migrant Dreams in Xavier Koller’s Journey of Hope (1990)
This article explores the shifting mobilities that structure the portrayal of a Turkish refugee family’s attempt to reach Switzerland illegally through various means of transportation in Xavier Koller’s multilingual Swiss-Turkish film Reise der Hoffnung (Journey of Hope, 1990). It traces how the fil...
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| Izdano u: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/transtexts, |
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| Glavni autori: | , |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jezik: | Anglais |
| Izdano: |
Transtext(e)s Transcultures
2023
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| Online pristup: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sažetak: | This article explores the shifting mobilities that structure the portrayal of a Turkish refugee family’s attempt to reach Switzerland illegally through various means of transportation in Xavier Koller’s multilingual Swiss-Turkish film Reise der Hoffnung (Journey of Hope, 1990). It traces how the film outlines a trajectory from hypermobile possibilities to an increasing restriction of mobility both on the level of the story and on the level of cinematic form. Combining recent perspectives on the politics of (im)mobility (see Cresswell 2006) with an attention to the spatial and mobile poetics of cinema (Cresswell and Dixon 2002, Naficy 2002), we show that the film critically engages with the role of geography (notably mountains) in Swiss political and national identity discourses. Ultimately, however, we argue that the film not only contributes to (still ongoing) political discussions about Switzerland’s problematic position in relation to European migration policies (Fenner 2003, Laws 2011), but also opens up broader questions about the narrative and aesthetic dimensions of cultural imaginaries pertaining to the entanglement of migration and (im)mobility. |
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