Globalisation, Cinema and Terrorism in Rachid Bouchareb’s Films: London River, Baton Rouge and Little Senegal

Abstract

Rachid Bouchareb describes London River as ‘my film about the 7/7 London bombings’ and this chapter observes what the director’s filmic language tells us about how to represent the intersection between globalization, nationalism, religion, terrorism and cinema. A comparison between this most recent film and earlier works such as Baton Rouge (1985) and Little Senegal (2001) suggests that Bouchareb has always troubled the generic filmic conventions of his generation. In London River, he chooses to focus on two grieving parents who desperately look for their missing children. The main protagonist of the film is the encounter between a Christian European mother and a Muslim African father. By privileging the intimacy of their difficult dialogue, Bouchareb successfully critiques and refuses a powerful post 9/11 tradition that consists in placing the sensational figure of the global terrorist and spectacular violence at the core of the story.