BORDERS, BORDER-CROSSING AND IDENTITY IN RECENT EUROPEAN CINEMA

This paper discusses border-crossing as a structure forming element in film. The text is focused on the representations of symbolic borders, drawn on the level of the metaphorical and their meanings in recent European cinema. The theoretical basis of my analysis is Schimanovski's concept of border poetics, where symbolic borders figure the epistemological border, seen as opposition between the physical and the metaphysical. Since Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979) this narrative pattern was developed in contemporary cinema as a conceptualization of the border from a territorial boundary to a discursive construction. This evolution is made visible in this article by examining three case-studies: the films The Lost City of Z (2016), Grain (2017) and The Sinking of Sozopol (2014). The border is reflected on many planes, including questions of identity which are crucial for contemporary European cinema.