A shimmering movement: Ali Abbasi’s Border as a trans* posthumanist post-celluloid adaptation

Abstract

Gräns (Border) (2018) is an adaptation of a short story by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist (2006). The film retains large parts of the literary plot as well as its focalization through the troll-protagonist Tina/Reva. At the same time, Border introduces significant modifications. I argue that by expanding the plot to include a number of new elements and amplifying Lindqvist’s strategy of ‘a shimmering movement’, including the experience of transness and identity as change, Abbasi’s film disrupts more forcefully our ideas about the human/nonhuman divide, sex and gender dualism, aesthetics, ethics and other normative regimes regulating our social and human lives. By examining the film as a post-celluloid adaptation, I show how Border incorporates Lindqvist’s critique of technology while also embracing the imaginative and affective possibilities of digital cinema to interrogate the responsibilities of humanity from a posthumanist perspective.