Greek Identity: Representation, Migration and Belonging.
This paper examines how contemporary Greek cinema reflects and reshapes national identity in the context of ongoing migration, historical trauma, and cultural transformation. Focusing on films presented at the 2025 Los Angeles Greek Film Festival and LMU’s Greek Cinema Week, I argue that modern Greek identity is not a fixed or ethnically bound construct, but a dynamic and contested process shaped by displacement, memory, and intercultural exchange. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s theories of representation, Richard Clogg’s historical analysis, and the transnational framework of Hellenisms, I analyze a selection of films that span different genres and historical periods: Unforgettable Homeland: Asia Minor, The Return That Never Was, Giannis in the Cities, A Couple of Years, Black Stone, Xenia, Hostage, and Between a Rock and a Hard Place.
These works were chosen for their thematic focus on forced migration, diasporic longing, racialized exclusion, post-war institutional violence, and hybrid identity. Together, they illustrate how cinema functions as both a mirror of social realities and a cultural intervention that challenges essentialist notions of Greekness. By highlighting individual and collective struggles for belonging, whether within Greece or across its borders, these films reveal identity as an evolving negotiation shaped by trauma, resistance, and human connection.