Affective Landscapes of Deterritorialization in Contemporary Cinema

Abstract

This article explores how filmmaker Alice Diop articulates her diasporic condition through the affective landscapes in her films. Our analysis focuses on her short film Vers la tendresse (2016), examining the cinematic and narrative strategies she employs to foreground the voices of the Other and construct an aesthetics of intimacy. We propose the concept of landscape of displacement to understand how experiences of migration and dislocation are inscribed in the film’s visual and affective language. Through voice-over testimonies and a fragmented structure, Diop portrays intimacy and affect among young men from a Parisian banlieue, destabilizing hegemonic representations and asserting alternative modes of visibility. Drawing on Édouard Glissant’s poetics of Relation and theoretical contributions from postcolonial and cultural studies, we reflect on how the film negotiates proximity, distance, and opacity in representing diasporic life. Ultimately, the article contributes to broader debates on diasporic cinema by showing how Diop’s work amplifies the voices and subjectivities of marginalized bodies and reshapes dominant modes of perception.