Migrations and Exiles in Cinematic Narratives

Migrations, travels, and journeys have always been among the most popular and interesting cinematic topics. Journeys are a driving force propelling most road movies and narratives of people on the move—migrants, travellers, refugees, exiles, fugitives, etc. On their journey, the travellers—whether due to voluntary or forced migration—cross many borders “not only physical and geographical, but also psychological, metaphorical, social, and cultural… [while] journeys may take the form of exploration, pilgrimage, escape, emigration, or return” (Naficy, 2001, p. 222). The diversity of borders and travellers sustains not only literary but, more importantly, metaphorical potentials of the journey (journey as growing up, identity transformation, class mobility). Most often, the two strands are hard to separate. Migrants’ journeys are made in search of daily bread, the myth of a promised land, or a new beginning. Once the destination is reached, instead of the desired, almost idyllic life and land of utopia, the travellers often only find dystopia and desperation, while the experience of the journey itself remains central.

Film narratives about journeys and people “on the move”—as a common thematic denominator—cover a wide range of genres and formats: road movie and migrant, diasporic, or accented cinema, among others. Before undertaking a brief overview of the films about journeys and the Balkans, it is necessary to make a distinction between overlapping notions of migrant, diasporic, exilic, or accented cinema as well as to define the added term of inner exile.