Queering the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema

Front matter

Queering the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema

This exciting and original volume offers the first comprehensive critical study of the recent profusion of European films and television addressing sexual migration and seeking to capture the lives and experiences of LGBTIQ+ migrants and refugees.

Queering the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema argues that embodied cinematic representations of the queer migrant, even if at times highly ambivalent and contentious, constitute an urgent new repertoire of queer subjectivities and socialities that serve to undermine the patrolled borders of gender and sexuality, nationhood and citizenship, and refigure or queer fixed notions and universals of identity like ‘Europe’ and national belonging based on the model of the family. At stake ethically and politically is the elaboration of a ‘transborder’ consciousness and aesthetics that counters the homonationalist, xenophobic and homo/trans-phobic representation of the ‘migrant to Europe’ figure rooted in the toxic binaries of othering (the good vs bad migrant, host vs guest, indigenous vs foreigner).

Introduction

1 Queering the migrant: being beyond borders JAMES S. WILLIAMS

PARTI Trans/migration of bodies and borders

2 The ghostly queer migrant: queering time, place, and family in contemporary German cinema LEANNE DAWSON

3 Trans-ing gender boundaries and national borders: rethinking identity in Merzak Allouache's Chouchou (2003) and Angelina Maccarone's Fremde Haut/Unveiled (2005) C.L. QUINAN

4 Transnational and migrant queer affects in two Basque films ALFREDO MARTÍNEZ-EXPÓSITO AND SANTIAGO FOUZ-HERNÁNDEZ

5 Queering the cinematic field: migrant love and rural beauty in God's Own Country (2017) and A Moment in tbe Reeds (2017)

vi Contents

6 Facing the queer migrant in Nordic Noir LOUISE WALLENBERG

PART II Refuge, (non-)hospitality, and (anti-)utopia

7 Post-communist and queer: Eastern European queer migrants on screen FANNI FELDMANN

8 Eastern Boys (2013): hospitality, trauma, kinship, and the state MURAT AYDEMIR

9 Almost haven: queer migrants' temporary refuge in Tel Aviv in Paper Dolls (2006), The Bubble (2006), and Out in the Dark (2012) NIR COHEN

10 We are all in Xenialand: queer poetics, citizenship, and hospitality in Panos H. Koutras's Xenia (2014) DIMITRIS PAPANIKOLAOU

PART III Space, belonging, and (anti-)sociality

11 Inner exiles: migrant representation and queer belongings in recent Irish films ALLISON MACLEOD

12 From migration to drift: forging queer migrant spaces and transborder relations in contemporary French cinema JAMES S. WILLIAMS

13 Trans-regional optics and queer affiliations in the work of Jonas Carpignano DEREK DUNCAN

14 Inside out: invaders, migrants, borders, and queering the Belgian family MICHAEL GOTT

Contents vii

15 Integration, perforce?: (de)queering, (de)abjectifying, and victimising the migrant and minority figure in contemporary European cinema 215 JEREMI SZANIAWSKI

PART IV Curating queer migrant cinema 229 16 Curating queer migrant cinema: interview between Sudeep

Dasgupta and James S. Williams 231 Filmography 243 Bibliography 248

Illustrations

1.1

1.2

1.3

2.1

2:2

2:3

2.4

3.1

3.2

3.3

4.1

Director Santi Zegarra (second from right) with (left to right) Cate Naluwooza, Roman Sorokine and Giovanna Rincon in Re-naissances/Re-births: The Journey of tbe Soul (2018)

Adja (Babetida Sadjo) sharing a lighter moment with Eldar (Patrik Nökkvi Pétursson) in And Breathe Normally (2018)

Esmail (Ardalan Esmaili) weighing up his options in the bar in Charmoren/The Charmer (2017) Gespensterl Gbosts (2005): Nina (Julia Hummer) discovers a heart-shaped mole exactly like that of the kidnapped child, Marie

Auf der anderen SeitelTbe Edge of Heaven (2007): lovers Ayten (Nurgül Yesilcay) and Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska) pictured in the detention centre where the former is being held

Ghosted (2009): Sophie (Inga Busch) at the video installation of Remembrance, with deceased Ai-Ling (Huan-Ru Ke) projected onto the wall behind her Fremde Haut/Unveiled (2005): Fariba (Jasmin Tabatabai), passing as Siamak, picking cabbage for the Sauerkraut factory with work colleague and soon-to-be partner, Anne (Anneke Kim Sarnau) Fariba/Siamak (Jasmin Tabatabai) in Fremde Haut/Unveiled (2005)

Chouchou (Gad Elmaleh) arriving in Paris

in Chouchou (2003)

Marriage of Chouchou (Gad Elmaleh) and Stanislas (Alain Chabat) in Chouchou (2003)

Rafa (Germán Alcarazu) and Ibra (Adil Koukouh) in A escondidas/Hidden Away (2014)

Illustrations

4.2 Ander (Josean Bengoetxea) and José (Cristhian Esquivel) in Ander (2009)

5.1 The very picture of New Gay Sincerity: Johnny (Josh O'Connor) opening up to Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu) after their first night together in God's Own Country (2017)

5.2 ‘Twill fuck with you’: Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu) making his intentions known after Johnny (Josh O'Connor) has insulted him again in God's Own Country (2017)

5.3 and 5.4 The reversible field: Tareq (Boodi Kabbani) and Leevi (Janne Puustinen) in A Moment in the Reeds (2017), their sameness emphasised by the shared colour tone of their t-shirts (grey-blue in 5.3, maroon in 5.4)

6.1 (Davor) Alexej Manvelov and Christian (Adam Pålsson) in season one of Innan vi dórlBefore we Die (2017)

6.2 Berber/French detective Kahina Zadi (Leila Bekhti) and Swedish/Sami prosecutor Anders Harnesk (Gustaf Hammarsten) in Midnattssol/Midnight Sun (2016)

7.1 Flying towards the imaginary West in Another Way (1982)

7.2 The embodiment of the desired West: Lana (Jelena Đokić) in Take a Deep Breath (2004)

7.3 Shaming the misbehaving footballer: Szabolcs (András Sütó) in Land of Storms (2014)

8.1 Marek/Rouslan (Kirill Emelyanov) at the Gare du Nord in Eastern Boys (2013)

8.2 The police raid in the hotel in Eastern Boys (2013)

8.3 Boss (Daniil Vorobyov) alone in the empty apartment in Eastern Boys (2013)

8.4 Daniel (Olivier Rabourdin) and Marek/Rouslan (Kirill Emelyanov) leaving the courthouse in Eastern Boys (2013)

9.1 Director Tomer Heymann being made up by Filipino members of Paper Dolls in his documentary about the group, Paper Dolls (2006)

9.2 Palestinian Ashraf (Yousef ‘Joe’ Sweid) (left) and Israeli Noam (Ohad Knoller) futilely trying to live as a couple in Tel Aviv in The Bubble/Ha’bua (2006)

ix x lllustrations

9.3

10.1

10.2

10.3

10.4

11.1

11.2

12.1

12.2

12.3

12.4

12.5

Palestinian student Nimr (Nicholas Jacob) (right) and Israeli lawyer Roy (Michael Aloni) fleeing to Europe so they can stay together in Out in the Dark/Alata (2012)

Dany (Kostas Nikouli) watches, and photoshops, as he is being watched walking around Athens

in Xenia (2014)

Dany (Kostas Nikouli) (left) and Odi (Nikos Gelia) under the sign of the abandoned Xenia hotel,

its meaningful name inverted and in obvious need of some reconstruction, in Xenia (2014)

Unsutured but still there: Dido the rabbit appears as a queer fairy to reassure Dany (Kostas Nikouli) in Xenia (2014)

‘Ciao, amore!': Patty Pravo (herself!) appears as a queer dea ex machina at the end of Xenia (2014) Father James (Brendon Gleeson) orders a drink

in the foreground as Simon (Isaach De Bankolé) and Jack (Chris O'Dowd) play chess in the background in Calvary (2014)

Fidel commands space, both on-stage at Alternative Miss Philippines (left) and at a meeting of the Overseas Nurses Section (right), in Here to

Returning the look: the police car transporting Eve and Corinne skirts another group of migrants

in Coincoin et les z'inbumains (2018)

A group of migrants helping up Carpentier (Philippe Jore) as Van der Weyden (Bernard Pruvost) brandishes his gun in Coincoin et les z'inbumains (2018)

‘Have you seen your face? You're all black, look!’: Carpentier to Van der Weyden while surrounded by migrants in Coincoin et les z'inbumains (2018) Coincoin (Alane Delhaye) walking in tandem with a young migrant girl in Coincoin et les z'inbumains (2018)

Coming together in song in the final, all-encompassing procession of Coincoin

et les z'inbumains (2018)

Illustrations xi

13.1 Pio (Pio Amato) reaches out to Aviya

(Koudous Seihon) in Mediterranea (2015) 195 13.2 Aviya’s hand, Pio's tears, in A Ciambra (2017) 197 14.1 The royal family and entourage in King

of the Belgians (2016) 204 14.2 Amadou (Issaka Sawadogo) takes the place in bed

of the white Belgian in The Invader (2011) 206 14.3 The family is reconstructed on the beach

in 25 Degrees in Winter (2004) 209

14.4 Wim (Wim Willaert), Dany (Lyés Salem), and Yvan

(Bouli Lanners) walk into the Quebec sunset in I’

Dead But I Have Friends (2015) 213 15.1 Tina (Eva Melander), a model Swedish customs

worker, despite her foreign origins and semi-abject

status in Border (2018) 216 15.2 Anja (Kaya Wilkins) and Thelma (Eili Harboe)

in Thelma (2017): a forbidden or dreaded love-affair 221 15.3 Anne (Trine Dyrholm) and Gustav (Gustav Lindh)

in Queen of Hearts (2019): a forbidden love-affair 223 15.4 Jens (Frederick Lau), about to hide in the wheat field

from what he perceives as a threat from the local

community, in Gutland (2017) 226 16.1 A panel discussion after the screening of I am Sofia

(2019), which opened the IQMF Queer Film Days at

the 2019 Prifest in Pristina: (from left to right) Sudeep

Dasgupta, Chris Belloni (IQMEF), the film's director

Silvia Luzi, the Dutch Human Rights Ambassador

Marriét Schuurman, and Kosovan-American

filmmaker Erblin Nushi 238

Contributors

Murat Aydemir is Associate Professor in literary and cultural analysis at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Images of Bliss: Ejaculation, Masculinity, Meaning (Minnesota University Press, 2007) and (co) editor of Migratory Settings (Brill, 2008) and Indiscretions: At the Intersection of Queer and Postcolonial Theory (Brill, 2011).

Nir Cohen holds a PhD in film studies from University College London and is the co-founder and co-editor of Jewish Film and New Media: An International Journal, and the author of Soldiers, Rebels and Drifters: Gay Representation in Israeli Cinema (both Wayne State University Press) among many other publications. He joined UK Jewish Film as Head of Programming in 2016. Before that, Nir was the curator of Jewish Book Week and taught at UCL, SOAS (University of London), and Penn State University.

Sudeep Dasgupta is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. His recent publications focus on the aesthetics and politics of displacement in visual culture in the fields of postcolonial and globalisation studies, political philosophy, and feminist and queer theory. His publications include ‘Sexual and Gender-based Asylum and the Queering of Global Space’ in Refugee Imaginaries (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), "The Aesthetics of Indirection: Intermittent Adjacencies and Subaltern Presences at the Borders of Europe’, Cinéma et Cie (2017), and the edited volumes What’s Queer About Europe? (with Mireille Rosello) (Fordham University Press, 2014) and Constellations of the Transnational: Modernity, Culture, Critique (Rodopi, 2007).

Leanne Dawson is Senior Lecturer in Film and German Studies at the University of Edinburgh, where she is AHRC Research Leader (Early Career, 2019-21). She is the founder of the Queer Screens Network and involved in the Scottish Queer Film Festival in various capacities, including Chair (2016-19) since the first festival in 2015. Her publications include Queering German Culture (2018), Queer European Cinema: Queering Cinematic Time and Space (2017); special journal issues Queer/ing Film

Contributors xiii

Festivals (2018), Queer European Cinema (2016), The Other: Gender, Sexuality and Ethnicity in European Cinema and Beyond (2014); and a range of articles and chapters considering a spectrum of queerness from monstrosity to normalisation in literature, theatre, performance art and — predominantly — film, across European, North American, and Asian cultures. She is currently finalising a monograph, From Girls in Uniform to Men in Drag, about queer femininities on the German screen from 1930 to the present day, while undertaking research for a new one entitled Poor Queers: Working-Class LGBTQ+ Representation in British Cinema, and editing a documentary based on her academic research, Femmes on Film, featuring people in the public eye who identify as both queer and feminine.

Derek Duncan is Professor of Italian at the University of St Andrews. He has published extensively on modern Italian culture particularly on intersections of sexuality/gender and of race/ethnicity in a transnational framework. He was founding editor of the ‘Cultural Studies’ issue of Italian Studies and edits Liverpool University Press’s acclaimed series “Transnational Italian Cultures’. He is also co-editor of Transnational Modern Languages: A Handbook (forthcoming with LUP). He is currently interested in exploring Italian cultural production as a set of vernacular material practices extending beyond the peninsula itself and in the multiple legacies of migration from Italy. He is increasingly engaged with developments in the creative humanities and in the fusion of academic research and creative practice.

Fanni Feldmann is a PhD student in the Doctoral School of Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Debrecen, engaged in research on the representation of sexual and gender identities in literature and film, primarily Eastern European cinema. Her main interests are the psychological process of coming out and its visual representations and interconnectedness with cultural, social, and political contexts. Her work has appeared in Ekphrasis (2017) and Nemek és etnikumok terei a magyar filmben (Spaces of Gender and Ethnicity in Hungarian Film) (2018) (ed. Győri Zsolt and Kalmar Gyorgy). She has also edited a volume of essays for the Hatvani Istvan Extramural College entitled (Ert) Gendered Lives (2016).

Santiago Fouz-Hernández is Professor in Hispanic Studies and Film Studies at Durham University. He is the author of Cuerpos de cine. Masculinidades carnales en el cine y la cultura popular contemporáneos (Bellaterra, 2013), co-author (with Alfredo Martínez-Expósito) of Live Flesh: The Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema (LB. Tauris, 2007) and editor of five books including Spanish Erotic Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2017) and Mysterious Skin. Male Bodies in Contemporary Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2009). He is an editorial board member of Studies in Spanish xiv Contributors and Latin American Cinemas. He is currently completing a monograph on filmmaker Bigas Luna for Manchester University Press.

Michael Gott is Associate Professor of French and Film and Media Studies at the University of Cincinnati. He is author of French-language Road Cinema: Borders, Diasporas, Migration and ‘New Europe’ (Edinburgh University Press, 2016) and co-edited Open Roads, Closed Borders: the Contemporary French-Language Road Movie (Intellect, 2013), East, West and Centre: Reframing European Cinema Since 1989 (EUP, 2014), Cinéma-monde: Decentred Perspectives on Global Filmmaking in French (EUP, 2018), and ReFocus: Rachid Bouchareb (EUP, 2020).

Allison Macleod is a researcher who also works in the EdTech sector. Her primary research interests include representations of space and movement in film, national cinemas, and queer theory. She has published on issues of sexuality and space in the context of film, with articles in The Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Screen Bodies and Cinephile, and a book chapter in Masculinity and Irish Popular Culture: Tiger’s Tales (2014). She is also the author of Irish Queer Cinema (2019), where she investigates the different ways gender and sexuality intersect with nationhood and national forms of belonging, and explores the role of queerness within the constitution of an Irish national culture.

Alfredo Martínez-Expósito is Professor of Spanish at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of Cuestión de imagen: cine y Marca Espana (Academia del Hispanismo, 2015), Escrituras Torcidas (Laertes, 2004), Los escribas furiosos: configuraciones bomoeróticas en la narrativa espafiola actual (University Press of the South, 1998), and co-author (with Santiago Fouz-Hernández) of Live Flesb: Tbe Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema (IB Tauris, 2007), and editor of three books, including Repensar los Estudios Ibéricos desde la Periferia (Edizioni Ca' Foscari, 2019), with José Colmeiro. He is Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities and the Madrid Institute for Advanced Study, and in 2019- 20 held a Chair of Excellence at Universidad Carlos III, Madrid.

Dimitris Papanikolaou is Associate Professor of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Cross College. He is the author of Singing Poets: Literature and Popular Music in France and Greece (Legenda, 2007), ‘Those people made like me’: C.P. Cavafy and the poetics of sexuality (Patakis, 2014, in Greek), and There is something about the family: Nation, desire and kinship in a time of crisis (Patakis 2018, in Greek). He has recently completed Greek Weird Wave: A Cinema of Biopolitics, for Edinburgh University Press.

C.L. Quinan is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. Her research interests include queer theory, trans studies, postcolonial studies, and feminist/

Contributors xv queer pedagogy, with work on gender, surveillance, and securitisation appearing in several journals and edited volumes. She is also the author of Hybrid Anxieties: Queering the French-Algerian War and its Postcolonial Legacies (University of Nebraska Press, 2020).

Jeremi Szaniawski is Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature and Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov: Figures of Paradox (Wallflower, 2014) and co-editor of Directory of World Cinema: Belgium (with Marcelline Block) (Intellect, 2014), The Global Auteur: The Politics of Authorship in 21st Century Cinema (with Seung-hoon Jeong) (Bloomsbury, 2016), On Women's Films Across Worlds and Generations (with Ivone Margulies) (Bloomsbury, 2019) and After Kubrick: A Filmmaker's Legacy (Bloomsbury, 2020). He has translated into French the books Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses (by Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener) (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011), V Tsentre Okeana (by Alexander Sokurov (UAge d'Homme, 2015), and Contemporary Romanian Cinema: The History of an Unexpected Miracle (Dominique Nasta, forthcoming).

Louise Wallenberg is Associate Professor of Fashion Studies in the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University. She holds a PhD in cinema studies from the same university (2002) and she was the founding director of the Centre for Fashion Studies between 2007 and 2013. She has published on cinema, gender, sexuality and fashion, and is currently writing a book on women film workers’ experiences in the Swedish film industry and co-editing a book on fashion ethics and aesthetics.

James S. Williams is Professor of Modern French Literature and Film at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of (among others) The Erotics of Passage: Pleasure, Politics, and Form in the Later Work of Marguerite Duras (1997), The Cinema of Jean Cocteau (2006), Jean Cocteau (a ‘Critical Life’) (2008), Space and Being in Contemporary French Cinema (2013) and Encounters with Godard: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics (2016). He is also co-editor of The Cinema Alone: Essays on the Work of Jean-Luc Godard 1985-2000 (2000), Gender and French Cinema (2001), For Ever Godard: The Cinema of Jean-Luc Godard (2004), Jean-Luc Godard. Documents (2006) (catalogue of the Godard exhibition held at the Centre Pompidou, Paris) and May ’68: Rethinking France’s Last Revolution (2011). His most recent monograph, Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary African Cinema: The Politics of Beauty, was published by Bloomsbury in 2019.

Acknowledgements

I would like first to thank Alex McGregor who, as editor for *Gender and Sexuality Studies’ at Routledge, responded so enthusiastically to the initial idea and has been a wonderful support at every stage. I am immensely grateful to Eleanor Catchpole Simmons for her superb editorial expertise and flexibility - she and her team, including Assistant Project Manager Ganesh Pawan Kumar Agoor, have been a joy to work with during the production process. My sincere thanks also to Alan Rutter for his brilliant work as ever on the Index. The identity of the anonymous readers of the proposal must necessarily remain unknown, but I record my appreciation for their many insightful comments and suggestions which proved enormously valuable in preparing the volume. By its very nature this book been a collective effort, and I would like to thank all the contributors for their inspiring collaboration over the course of the project. I express my particular gratitude to Sudeep Dasgupta for giving so generously of his time during our extended interview and for sharing his new work. Finally, my special thanks to Jason Gittens for his love and encouragement, always.

This book is dedicated to all migrants to Europe whose lives and aspirations have been rendered further precarious and uncertain by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Introduction

1 Queering the migrant Being beyond borders

The queer turn in European migratory film

Since a European Union directive in 2011 made persecution for sexual orientation and gender identity valid legal grounds for asylum in Europe - the so-called SOGI non-discrimination laws (SO = sexual orientation, GI - gender identity) - the long-overlooked phenomenon of alternatively gendered migrants and refugees escaping persecution due to sexual orientation has come urgently to the fore in European society and culture.! Refugees identifying as LGBTIQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, non-binary, queer or questioning) have been attempting to cross the border into Europe and claim sexual asylum, fleeing countries where homosexuality is not just maligned but also attacked, maimed, and obliviated (14 countries worldwide, including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Syria, impose violent physical and psychological punishments and/or the death penalty for homosexuality).? These refugees form part of the recent European migrant and humanitarian crisis — one that began in earnest in the summer of 2011 following the Arab Spring and exploded in 2015 when rising numbers of people arrived in the European Union, travelling across the Mediterranean Sea or overland through southeast Europe (at its peak, an unprecedented 1.2 million people crossed European borders in both 2015 and 2016 and applied to EU member-states for asylum (Eurostat 2017)). Only a small number of migrants and refugees seeking asylum in Europe on grounds of sexual orientation and/or gender identity have been successful, although reliable official statistics are hard to obtain due to a general lack of scientific research.? To take the case of one (now former) member-state, the UK: ‘experimental’ statistics published by the Home Office in September 2018 containing data referring to SOGI applications reveal that from 2015 to 2017 a total of 5,916 asylum applications were officially lodged where a sexual orientation basis was recorded (lesbian, gay or bisexual, but not transgender or intersex), representing 6.6% of all asylum applications received during that period. More recent information provided by the Home Office indicates, however, that, as of September 2019, the UK has refused at least 3,100 asylum claims from LGBTIQ+ nationals from countries where consensual same-sex acts are criminalised, notably Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria.*

In response to the growing numbers of queer migrants and refugees attempting to cross both into and within the EU, contemporary European cinema has witnessed a profusion of innovative and pivotal films addressing themes of sexual migration while seeking to convey queer migrant lives in Europe and at its borders. This process had already begun in the early 2000s with works like Princesa (2001, Italy/Spain/France/UK/Germany, dir. Henrique Goldman), an amalgam of gritty social document and emotive melodrama telling the story of Fernanda, a 19-year-old Brazilian transsexual who goes to Milan and works as a prostitute (‘Princesa’) in order to raise money for her sex-change operation. It has since developed into a dazzling array of films in all forms and formats, from commercial feature films to smallbudget video works, shorts and installations, and covering the full spectrum of genres and styles. They range from narrative fictions — powerful, taut, emotional dramas like Unveiled/Fremde Haut (2005, Germany/Austria, dir. Angelina Maccarone), about an Iranian lesbian interpreter assuming a dead man's identity in order to escape to Germany and avoid capital punishment for homosexual acts, and romantic dramas like A Moment in the Reeds (2017, Finland/UK, dir. Mikko Makela) tracing the intimate emotional and erotic bonds that form between a young (white) Finnish man and a Syrian refugee in rural Finland - to stirring documentaries of grassroots advocacy such as Refugees under tbe Rainbow (2018, Germany, dir.

Stella Traub), where three queer Ugandan refugees tell direct to camera the story of their gruelling attempts to find safe refuge and happiness in Germany, and Re-naissances/Re-births: The Journey of the Soul (2018, France/Russia/ China/Peru dir. Santi Zegarra), comprising intimate and affirmative portraits of queer and trans refugees in France (including a transwoman from Columbia, a transman from Russia, a lesbian from Uganda, and a gay man from China)? Other more hybrid works include the docu-fiction Refugee’s Welcome (2017, Spain/Germany), a self-styled porn short by well-known queer auteur Bruce La Bruce focusing on the adventures of a young Syrian man (Moonif) who wanders the streets of Berlin after leaving the refugee camp to which he has been assigned, and the freewheeling queer road movie Xenia (2014, Greece, dir. Panos H. Koutras), which employs comedy and fantasy sequences to chart the quest for Greek citizenship undertaken by a flamboyantly styled, Greek-Albanian, adolescent boy and his older brother in the face of homophobic violence. In a still relatively rare instance of migrants recording their journey to Europe as it is taking place,° Shelter: Farewell to Eden (2019, France/Italy, 2019, dir. Enrico Masi) provides a first-person portrait documentary portrait of Filipino transsexual Pepsi, a former resistance fighter in the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and nurse in Gadaffi's Libya, now seeking asylum in Italy, France, and the UK. Never directly photographed at her insistence, Pepsi speaks on the soundtrack about the in-between, transitional places of her restless journey and the realities of the queer, Muslim, migrant everyday, complemented formally by Masi's kaleidoscopic editing style incorporating raw found footage.

The portrayal of queer refugees and migrants has also become increasingly prominent on European television, most strikingly in the genre of Nordic Noir, for example, the Swedish series Bron/The Bridge (2011-18, SVT) which, in its fourth season, centred on the character of a gay Iranian refugee in his late 20s living illegally in Copenhagen. Alongside this remarkable proliferation of original and often radical work on queer migration, and serving directly to stimulate it, has been the emergence of queer migrant film festivals, most notably the annual International Queer and Migrant Film Festival in Amsterdam and other Dutch cities (inaugurated in 2015), and the International Queer Minorities Film Festival: Transition in Vienna.

While occasional articles and (part-)chapters have been devoted to queer migration in European films (Loshitzky 2010; Williams 2010; Ballesteros 2015; Guha 2015; Bayraktar 2016), there has, as yet, been no sustained engagement with the complex and pressing themes of queer migration in contemporary European cinema. This is partly because the specific issue of migration (queer or otherwise) has often been conflated with those of immigration and the post-migrant experience of integration, assimilation, and diasporic identity." In order to appreciate fully how the migrant figure has been queered in European film and, in the process, grasp the extraordinary thematic range and significance of this rapidly expanding field within European cinema, we need first to establish the cultural and political contexts of sexual migration,

Figure 1.1 Director Santi Zegarra (second from right) with (left to right) Cate Naluwooza, Roman Sorokine and Giovanna Rincon in Re-naissances/Re-births: The Journey of the Soul (2018)

Source: Re-naissances/Re-births: The Journey of the Soul (2018), directed by Santi Zegarra © Sunkku Producciones.

starting with what exactly is meant in legal and political terms by queer asylum, and the particular obstacles placed in its path.

Queer migration to Europe: asylum, rights, homonationalism

Although SOGI-related rights have been recognised both at an international and domestic level, forming part of the EU's increasingly sophisticated body of asylum laws and policies for migrants and refugees known as the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), there have been major problems in their implementation.? A primary concern has been the burden of queer proof. In an asylum system which still presumes refugees to be heterosexual, LGBTIQ+ refugees must provide conclusive evidence that they are gay, lesbian or trans, or else find themselves deemed ‘not gay enough’, or not to have the expected gay ‘demeanour’ and ‘dress code’, to qualify for SOGI recognition.’ ‘Not gay enough’, like ‘too gay’, is, of course, an entirely subjective and culturally relative criterion. As Rachel A. Lewis incisively puts it, in order to be considered credible and worthy candidates for asylum, alternatively gendered applicants are compelled to ‘perform’ a visible identity in the country to which they migrate while at the same time conform to Western stereotypes of (male) homosexual behaviour based on visibility, consumption, and an identity in the public sphere (Lewis 2013). To take just a few among the countless examples of this double bind reported by Human Rights Watch in Austria: in August 2018 the authorities rejected the asylum application of a 27-year-old Iraqi on the grounds that he was behaving ‘like a girl’ and ‘faking’ his homosexuality. One week earlier, an 18-year-old Afghan asylum seeker was denied refugee status because, according to the adjudicating official, '[n]either your walk nor behaviour nor clothing indicate in any way you might be homosexual’ (Austrian authorities subsequently distanced themselves from this decision and disciplined the official). In addition, while EU member-states are entitled to investigate the validity of individual claims, asylum officers in the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Cyprus (among others) have been especially suspicious of Muslim applicants, as if one could not possibly be both gay and Muslim. The result of this highly inconsistent and ambiguous processing of sexual and gender asylum across Europe is a fundamentally homophobic mispractice of credibility and assessment. Intrusive and sometimes outlandish methods have been employed: applicants to the UK, for example, have been pressured to provide sexually explicit photographic and video evidence, while Czech authorities have attempted to measure degrees of sexual arousal. Some asylum claims have even been rejected on the basis that applicants can ‘behave discreetly’ and hence avoid persecution in their countries of origin, although this is expressly condemned by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which provides parameters that immigration officers in EU countries must respect.

Certainly, European asylum officers are now officially required to beknowledgeable about issues facing sexual and gender minorities, and put aside their preconceived notions of how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people should behave.!? For Johannes Lukas Gartner, however, this process should go much further: instead of demanding queer refugees to account for their sexual conduct, it would be more appropriate to question them on their feelings about being (perceived as) ‘different’ in their respective societies, the stigma that arises out of this, the potential isolation that follows, and the related harm they have experienced. Yet the brute reality remains that by presupposing limited notions of supposedly European homosexuality as part of asylum processes, the asylum systems of European countries are ‘moulding’ queer petitioners into a particular Western characterisation of queer identity (Gartner 2015: 136). Queer asylum seekers are required to act their identities in a way that shows they are ‘“in place" among the receiving state's good gay and lesbian citizenry’ (Gartner 2015: 137) - a demand that usually equates to embodying the expectations immigration officials have of their own local and culturally specific queer communities.

The systemic failings and misunderstandings in the provision for queer asylum in Europe are further compounded by the politicisation of its aims and ideals. In a trenchant and well-informed analysis of LGBTIQ+ asylum in the UK entitled Discourses on LGBT Asylum in the UK: Constructing a Queer Haven (2017), which examines the relationship between liberalism, nationhood, and hospitality, Thibaut Raboin dissects both the neoliberal management of asylum for LGBTIQ+ seekers and the effects of persisting colonial imaginaries on the representation of sexual freedom. He reveals that the prospect of a safe haven works as an exhortation as much as a promise in asylum, and that the queer futurism offered by current neoliberal discourses on asylum perpetuates the dream of a good life — albeit a homonormative conception of it - where happiness, individual freedom, and autonomy on the market are closely entwined. Such futurism may be summed up by the notion of ‘happy queer futures’ in the UK - one that draws on the model narrative of what Sara Ahmed, in Tbe Promise of Happiness (2010), has called the ‘happy migrant’, that is, someone who espouses national ideals couched in terms of Empire, the twist here being that sexual diversity is now held aloft as a justification of Empire’s liberation from abjection (by contrast, according to Ahmed, postcolonial ‘melancholic migrants’ exist in a state of discontent due to their refusal of the imperial formula of ‘liberation from abjection’) (see Ahmed 2010a). Moreover, the narratives of asylum cases create a specific temporality whereby ‘queer futures’ are deemed impossible outside the UK. The tropes of the domestic homophobic past and the homophobic ‘elsewhere’ interact in discourses to produce a unique type of politicisation of asylum - one where British liberal queers become personally invested in defending the rights of LGBTIQ+ asylum seekers. However, as Raboin convincingly argues, political emotions such as sympathy can constitute both a basis for solidarity and a means of dispossessing claimants of their very agency.