Kinotopias

Film, Place and Belonging in a Bordered World

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by Kevin Smets, Lennart Soberon, Irene Gutiérrez-Torres and Silvia Almenara-Niebla

Type

Essays

Subject

Sociology

Keywords

sociology, politics

Publishing date

2026 (July 31, 2026)

Publisher

Edinburgh University Press

Collection

Political Cinemas

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 224 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-3995-3665-3

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Book Presentation:
Combining original research with insights from social sciences, philosophy and film theory, it argues that film can effectively capture both material and socio-cultural dimensions of borders and their underlying tensions. From popular cinema using border surveillance optics to militant and amateur filmmaking by borderlanders, Kinotopias: Film, Place and Belonging in a Bordered World traces diverging strategies that use film to enforce or overcome borders, demonstrating how film can become a political instrument for belonging. Introducing the concept of debordering film, the book urges a rethinking of how film is made, studied and understood, foregrounding neglected forms, voices and spatial experiences.

​​​​​​​Through an ambitious conceptual framework stemming from research on highly politicised borders in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, Kinotopias makes a strong case for the social and political power of film as a tool of resistance and reimagination.

About the authors:
Kevin Smets is Associate Professor in Media and Culture at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), where he co-directs the research group ECHO: Media, Culture & Politics. He has previously published Film: Een geschiedenis (2022) and co-edited the SAGE Handbook of Media and Migration (2020).Lennart Soberon is a postdoctoral researcher at the Reel Borders project at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and artistic coordinator of KASKcinema (Ghent). His film Dragon’s Teeth (2024) won the Best Short Documentary Award at Galway Film Fleadh. He is the co-founder of cinephile platform Kinoautomat.Irene Gutiérrez-Torres is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M). Her artistic and academic work critically engages with migration and border dynamics through participatory filmmaking.Silvia Almenara-Niebla is a Ramón y Cajal senior research fellow at the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain) and an affiliated researcher at ECHO: Media, Culture & Politics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium). She has published in various international journals and received research awards on these topics.

Press Reviews:
Kinotopias offers a much-needed cultural perspective into a world of ever-expanding borders. Its rigorous, but also creative and perceptive approach to borderlands through filmmaking, ethnography and participatory cinema practices reveals them as sites of power but also of people and culture. A must read for anyone interested in migration, belonging and the cultural politics of film. ― Myria Georgiou, London School of Economics and Political Science

See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press