Migration is everywhere: The overlooked landscapes of Inch’Allah Dimanche (2001) by Yamina Benguigui

Abstract

This article examines Yamina Benguigui’s 2001 film Inch’Allah Dimanche as a reflection of the transformative impact of past and ongoing migrations to France. While the narrative centres on an Algerian family reunification in the north of France during the 1970s, the film incorporates numerous landscapes as active aesthetic and narrative devices that, I argue, could be studied through a postmigratory lens. In an ecological reading that attends to the multiple discursive, historical and thematic threads embedded in the film’s physical environment, I analyse three landscapes featured as metaphors for the sets of struggles, conflicts and negotiations taking place in societies shaped by migration and colonialism. By taking such an approach, I aim to foreground the ecological dimensions of postmigration and their potential to further decentre the study of audio-visual narratives about migration.