First-Generation Women in Short Films

Abstract

This chapter examines key short films featuring Maghrebi migrant women in France through an analysis of objects such as letters, a play script, food, photographs, and clothing items. It highlights the extent to which such objects are crucial to giving expression to the experiences of Maghrebi women through this particular medium, where meaning must necessarily be communicated in a short period of time. These objects have multi-layered meanings and serve as potential channels for communication and understanding between first-generation women and people who are different from them, most notably because they have not shared the women’s experience of migration and exile and in many cases do not speak the women’s mother tongue. This analysis highlights the ways in which the women negotiate, navigate, and cross various cultural, linguistic, psychological, and spatial boundaries or barriers that exist in their lives. The cultural productions discussed in this chapter include films directed by Fejria Deliba, Ismaël Ferroukhi, Faïza Guène, and Catherine Bernstein.