Diasporic returns and queer kinship networks in contemporary French and Maghrebi francophone cinema

Abstract

Recent portrayals of trans-Mediterranean mobility within French and Maghrebi francophone queer cinema have showcased the return of immigrant and second-generation queer men of Maghrebi origin to their diasporic homeland in North Africa. Focusing on two films from this corpus – Rémi Lange’s 2001 Tarik El Hob (The Road to Love) and Mehdi Ben Attia’s 2009 Le fil (The String) — this article traces the ways in which ethnic queer subjects have fostered alternative genealogies of kinship and intimacy in relation to the French nation state and the Maghrebi heteronormative family. It demonstrates how such a reconceptualization of kinship ties involves the renegotiation of domesticity for queer Maghrebi immigrant and diasporic subjects against the backdrop of institutional kinship structures such as civil unions and same-sex marriage in contemporary France.