CfE 47 - The Populist Screen: The Poetics, Production and Circulation of Populism in Contemporary European Audiovisual Media
Call for Essays for the thematic section of Cinéma & Cie no. 47, edited by Luana Fedele, Dom Holdaway and Thomas J. J. Scherer. Deadline for abstract proposals: January 30th, 2026.
With the sweeping growth and electoral successes of populist movements over the past two decades, challenging the legacy of liberal democracies, this political form is a consolidated reality of our times. The use of polarizing narratives of nationhood, leadership and the people by many European parties – from Fratelli d’Italia and Vox to Alternative für Deutschland, from Prawo i Sprawiedliwość to the Partij voor de Vrijheid and Reform UK – have consolidated the importance of these techniques. The populist phenomenon is currently expanding globally, though it is only directly transferrable to a limited degree, shaping itself in relation to specific local forms and cultural impulses.
With ideological flexibility, these different political actors hegemonize the understanding of diverse and complex “crises” through a pattern of recurring images (intended here in multimodal terms) bearing tropes that commonly emphasize definitions of a nation or a community in ethnic-reductive terms, or exclusionary societal views (Moffit, 2017), transmitted via screens. While scholarship on populism has varied in its definitions – from the discursive (Laclau, 2005) to ideational (Mudde, 2004), to mention just a couple – a majority of this work emphasizes the importance of narrative and persuasion, through multimodal forms of meaning making. Indeed, populists provide cues that dictate not only a vision of the people, as custodians of sovereignty, but, for example, also the political leader as “unmediated” and charismatic or the enemy, a corrupt elite, a migrant “invasion force”, or an unruly trans body that troubles typecast notions of normative gender.
What kind of role do film, series and hosted video (Lotz & Lunardi, 2025) play in the creation, promotion or disputing of these populist narratives? In which forms are populist thought patterns adopted in films and series, and in the screen cultures around them? What stances towards populism are expressed in narratives, images and sounds and how do they create, promote or deconstruct real-world political stances? These are the key research questions that this issue of Cinéma et cie seeks to ask, uniting essays that address populism in European audiovisual media in the 21st century.
While, quite understandably, much scholarship has been dedicated to the use of news and social media by populists (Mazzoleni, 2008, Krämer, 2014), only a small (but growing) fraction of academic work has been dedicated to the way populism can be understood as a cultural phenomenon (Herkman, 2022), through specific cultural texts (Coladonato & Sangiovanni, 2019; Schober, 2019) or within visual phenomena (Moffitt, 2022). This is all the more surprising, since populism relies on narratives to pose the alternative worldviews that it promises to deliver, visualizing contexts in which “us” and “them” clash. Film, television and streaming series and short-form video (on social media) are among the most powerful and efficient vehicles of narratives and symbolic, affectively charged fictional worlds. They are likewise central to a lot of contemporary cultural discourses. Suffice it to think, for example, of the so-called “culture wars”, of wokeism, of the backlash around gender swap films, and how these phenomena feed political discussions.
Just a handful of emblematic examples could include: the politicians in Baron Noir (2016-20), Borgen (2010-13, 2022) or Welcome Mr President (Benvenuto presidente, 2013); the broader sketches of populist sentiments (such as anti-elitism or anti-immigration) in Money Heist (La casa de papel, 2017-21), Amerika Square (Πλατεία Αμερικής, 2016), Glory (Слава, 2016) and This is our Land (Chez nous, 2017); more general representations of regional and national sentiments, rather than explicit images of politicians, as in hugely popular comedies like the Long Flat Balls films (Lange Flate Ballær, 2006-2022), Spanish Affair films (Ocho apellidos vascos, 2014 and Ochos apellidos catalanes, 2015) or Quo vado? (2016). This can also include content made more directly by populist actors – like Geert Wilders’ racist, propagandistic documentary Fitna (2017); works about populist parties, like A German Party (Eine deutsche Partei, 2022); producers who move between politics and filmmaking (such as Luca Barbareschi); or even direct transfers between TV fictions and real-world politics, as in the case of Servant of the People (Слуга народу, 2015-19).
These forms of screen media have a complex relationship with borders. The circulation of content across Europe is restricted by linguistic barriers, consumption habits, and distribution networks. Similarly, populist rhetorics revive affective and ideological ties to nationalisms, yet the populist movements across the continent have necessarily transnational frames of reference (for example, in anti-EU or anti-migrant rhetoric), as well as forms of co-operations and influences across borders.
For this special issue of Cinéma et cie, we welcome articles exploring the interactions between populist politics and screen media in Europe. We are particularly interested in work on fictional film, television and streaming series in the 21st century – though different media, historical and geographical contexts and comparative perspectives are also welcome. We encourage contributions that adopt less common methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives.
Possible areas of interest could include, but are not limited to, the following macro areas:
- Populist images: the genres, visual grammars and affective registers used to narrate populism and the characters and identities that are vehicles for these narratives; re-imaginations of populism in fictional media (e.g. in the sense of Mouffe, 2018) beyond nationalist-exclusivist approaches.
- Populism’s affective poetics and the politics of emotion in audiovisual media: how emotions shape and circulate within populist discourse and discourse on populism in audiovisual media. Which emotional registers (cf. Illouz, 2023) are foregrounded, how are they mobilized, and in what ways might they support or undermine democratic resilience?
- Popular culture studies, considering potential overlaps and shared spaces between “popular” and “populist”.
- The “glocal” dimension of populist narratives and fictions: which aspects, images and tropes circulate across Europe and which are confined to certain regions or countries, and following which kinds of logics?
- Theoretical accounts of populist screens, for instance employing affect theory; theories of gender, race, queer or other identities; decolonial or postcolonial theory; cultural and media/mediatization theory; sociological, historical or philosophical studies.
- Production and distribution cultures and their political dimension; the role of funding bodies and of specific mandates and ideologies; the role of distribution strategy in the dissemination of political content.
- Creations and uses of audiovisual media content by populist politicians, in campaigns and beyond, in order to give shape to political action mobilise voters; the role of “artificial intelligence” and the registers it uses (or imitates).
- Reception studies: what audiences make of populist narratives, in physical and digital consumption spaces.
- Audiences studies of populist screens: where does this kind of content reach? What kinds of communities, constituencies, electorates are built or deconstructed by film, series and hosted video? Which spaces of resistance to populist cultures emerge, likewise, and how do they engage with audiovisual rhetorics?
Submission Details
Please send your abstract (maximum of 400 words) with bibliographic references and a short biographical note to dominic.holdaway@uniurb.it, luana.fedele@uniroma1.it and Scherer@europa-uni.de by 30 January 2026.
Authors will be notified of the outcome of the selection by mid-February.
If accepted, the author(s) will be asked to submit the full article by 30 April 2026.
All article submissions should include: 5 keywords, author name(s) and a 100-word max bio, institutional affiliation(s) and contact details.
Articles must not exceed 6,000 words (including bibliography). Contributions will be submitted to double blind peer review. Submission of a paper will be taken to imply that it is unpublished and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.
Issue no. 47 of Cinéma & Cie will be published in Winter 2026.
N.b., If you are interested in the issue theme but unsure about proposal ideas or unable to contribute this time, feel free to reach out anyway – we’d be happy to hear from you, and are interested in developing a network or work-group of scholars around this theme.
Bibliography
Coladonato, V., & Sangiovanni, A. (2019). “Cinema e populismo. Modelli e immaginari di una categoria politica”. Cinema e Storia, 8(1), 7-24.
Herkman, J. (2022). A cultural approach to populism. Routledge.
Illouz, E. (2023). The Emotional Life of Populism: How Fear, Disgust, Resentment and Love Undermine Democracy. Polity Press.
Krämer, B. (2014). “Media Populism: A Conceptual Clarification and Some Theses on its Effects”. Communication Theory, 24(1), 42-60. https://doi.org/10.1111/comt.12029
Laclau, E. (2005). On Populist Reason. Verso.
Lotz, A. D., & Lunardi, G. (2025). “Understanding hosted video and its uses: Conceptualizing new fields of video experience”. New Media & Society, online first: https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251338490
Mazzoleni, G. (2008). “Populism and the Media”, in D. Albertazzi & D. McDonnell (eds.), Twenty-first Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy (pp. 49-64). Palgrave Macmillan.
Moffitt, B. (2017). The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Stanford University Press.
Moffitt, B. (2022). “Taking Account of the Visual Politics of Populism”. Polity, 54(3). https://doi.org/10.1086/719829
Mouffe, C. (2018). For a Left Populism. Verso.
Mudde, C. (2004). “The Populist Zeitgeist”. Government and Opposition 39(4): 541-563
Schober, A. (Ed.). (2019). Popularisation and Populism in the Visual Arts: Attraction Images. Routledge.
