Rejecting a ‘fortress Europe’: how German borderland films of the early 2000s foreshadowed trajectories at European borders today

Abstract

This article revisits German borderland films made in the early 2000s to investigate how they anticipate today’s migration politics in a transformed European Union with constantly shifting borders. The contribution focuses on Vanessa Jopp’s Vergiss Amerika/Forget America (2000) and Hans-Christian Schmid’s Lichter/Distant Lights (2003) in an analysis of cinematic representations of borderlands, Germany and Europe during a time when the EU prepared its expansion into the East in 2004. From a temporal distance of more than a decade, these films exemplify early self-reflective and critical views of a Europe that has become a fortress with heavily patrolled borders despite today’s heavy migration flows in a transnational era. Both films are cinematic reflections of socio-political, economic and aesthetic trajectories in the new Europe. This article argues that, in spatial terms, Vergiss Amerika and Lichter depict the idea of modern Germany as the EU’s emerging powerhouse and Europe’s image as Eldorado for migrants as highly deceptive concepts. Both borderland films look critically towards Berlin in anticipation of future developments in Germany and within the borders of the European Union with feelings that are fuelled with hopes, anxieties, disillusionment and rejection.