Abstract

This paper analyses recent works by Aida Begić and Želimir Žilnik— Never Leave Me (2017) and The Most Beautiful Country in the World (2018), respectively. These works narrate the evolving lives of migrants on the borderlines of the Balkan Anatolian region. Migrants’ aspiration to reach their “dream land” is interpreted as a journey towards unfolding “the virtual realities of consciousness” of both actors and directors. The reflections of both Begić and Žilnik on the issue of migration, filmed in an accented style, highlight their own post-Yugoslav perspectives, which allows us to analyse the two films in context of “return to homeland”—a concept present both in Naficy's theories of an accented cinema and in Boym's notion of “reflective nostalgia.”

Keywords: migrants’ representation, post-Yugoslav cinema, return to homeland, reflective nostalgia

The European controversy once again won by defending the Schengen from the outside (from Macedonia towards Greece) alluding to the great schism along the former East-West (Iron Curtain) divide… a huge majority of refugees ended up in Germany who socially overdid this experiment outplayed with the help of Turkey and the Balkan suzerains. The countries from Greece to Slovenia found themselves in a position of gatekeepers tailored to suit the wishes of the mighty. Even Austria found itself in an uninformed position not exactly knowing what to expect and how to intermingle. (2017, p. 22)