The ongoing changes fuelled by the many facets of globalisation have been extensively recorded by cinema. The evolution of communication, working practices and mobility are three major themes through which this impact can be assessed. Cinéma-monde, understood as a concept favouring a decentred approach, invites us to evaluate the ways in which films in French capture these evolving realities of globalisation. Emphasising relationality and a global perspective, cinéma-monde is emancipated from the national framework without overlooking the realities of the national paradigm. One way, in cinema, of decentring the perspective is to focus on what is commonly called the margin, a term that immediately implies its opposite, centre, thereby reinforcing the national framework hierarchy. However, the conceptual logic underlying cinéma-monde, understood as a theory and a practice, implies that the nation is not an all-encompassing level of analysis and that a more global perspective highlighting connections with the rest of the world, at various levels, be they national or of a different nature, reveals a different picture worthy of being exposed.

The following analysis examines two recent films, Le Havre (Aki Kaurismaki, 2011, Finland/France/Germany) and Samba (Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, 2014, France), about illegal immigration to or through France. In Le Havre, by Finnish director Kaurismäki, shoeshine man Marcel Marx (André Wilms) helps the young Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) cross the border from Le Havre, where the container in which he was hiding was mistakenly unloaded, to England in order to be reunited with his mother. In Samba, the eponymous character (Omar Sy) has been living in Paris for ten years when he is notified by the French authorities that he has to leave French territory. He instead hides, struggles to stay employed, and develops a relationship with Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a single woman who volunteers for a migrant assistance organisation as part of her therapy to recovery from her occupational burnout.

The marginal position of migrants in France can be exposed in cinema in a variety of ways depending on the degree of emphasis put on the characters of migrants and on the degree of reliance on features of mainstream cinema. Samba and Le Havre frame this wide spectrum suggested by these two variables within which Welcome (Philippe Lioret, 2009, France) has become a benchmark.