This is the first collection of essays about French-language road movies, a particularly rich yet critically neglected cinematic category. These films, the contributors argue, offer important perspectives on contemporary French ideas about national identity, France's former colonies, Europe, and the rest of the world. Taken together, the essays illustrate how travel and road motifs have enabled directors of various national origins and backgrounds to reimagine space and move beyond simple oppositions such as Islam and secularism, local and global, home and away, France and Africa, and East and West.

The first book devoted to a wide-ranging study of developments in global French-language cinema, from Quebec to Mauritania and from Belgium to Cambodia, Cinema-monde picks up on the lively scholarly debates generated by the related topic of litterature-monde. Extending the scope of this debate to cover the thriving and diverse area of international French-language cinema, this innovative book also considers cinema from France within the context of global production. With contributions from an international range of specialists, and with considerations of works by contemporary directors like Rachid Bouchareb, Abderrahmane Sissako and Rithy Panh, Cinema-monde explores the porous borders around francophone spaces and the ways in which languages and identities 'travel' in contemporary cinema.

A wide-ranging study of developments in global French-language cinemaThe first book devoted to a wide-ranging study of developments in global French-language cinema, from Quebec to Mauritania and from Belgium to Cambodia, 'Cinema-monde' picks up on the lively scholarly debates generated by the related topic of litterature-monde. Extending the scope of this debate to cover the thriving and diverse area of international French-language cinema, this innovative book also considers cinema from France within the context of global production. With contributions from an international range of specialists, and with considerations of works by contemporary directors like Rachid Bouchareb, Abderrahmane Sissako and Rithy Panh, 'Cinema-monde' explores the porous borders around francophone spaces and the ways in which languages and identities 'travel' in contemporary cinema.ContributorsJoseph Mai (Clemson University)Mireille Rosello (University of Amsterdam)Laura Reeck (Allegheny College)Dayna Oscherwitz (Southern Methodist University)Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp (University of Rhode Island)Michael Gott (University of Cincinnati)Vlad Dima (University of Wisconsin) Gemma King (The University of Melbourne)Thibaut Schilt (College of the Holy Cross)Leila Ennaili (Central Michigan University)Alison Rice (University of Notre Dame)Jaime Steele (University of Exeter)Michelle Stewart (SUNY-Purchase)Carina Yervasi (Swarthmore College)Bill Marshall (University of Stirling)Lucy Mazdon (University of Southampton)Will Higbee (University of Exeter)

In just over a decade, Francois Ozon has earned an international reputation as a successful and provocative filmmaker. A student of Eric Rohmer and Jean Douchet at the prestigious Femis, Ozon made a number of critically acclaimed shorts in the 1990s and released his first feature film "Sitcom" in 1998. Two additional shorts and eleven feature films have followed, including international successes "8 femmes" and "Swimming Pool" and more recent releases such as "Angel, Ricky, " and "Le refuge." Ozon's originality lies in his filmmaking style, which draws on familiar cinematic traditions (the crime thriller, the musical, the psychological drama, the comedy, the period piece) but simultaneously mixes these recognizable genres and renders them unfamiliar. Despite tremendous diversity in cinematic choices, Ozon's oeuvre is surprisingly consistent in its desire to blur the traditional frontiers between the masculine and the feminine, gay and straight, reality and fantasy, auteur and commercial cinema. Thibaut Schilt provides an overview of Francois Ozon's career to date, highlighting the director's unrestrained, voracious cinephilia, his recurrent collaborations with women screenwriters and actresses, and the trademarks of his cinema including music, dance, and the clothes that accompany these now typically Ozonian episodes. Schilt contextualizes Ozon's filmmaking within the larger fields of French filmmaking and international queer cinema, and he discusses several major themes running through Ozon's work, including obsessions with inadequate fathers, various types of mourning, and a recurring taste for "the foreign." The volume also includes an insightful interview with the director.