DECENTRING FRANCE

In a world defined by the flow of people, goods and cultures, many contemporary French films explore the multicultural nature of today&rsquo,s France, portraying multilingualism in novel and empowering ways. In such films, the status of a wide range of languages is evolving from trivialised to central, through strategic language use, characters wrest power from one another and wield it in innovative ways. From rival lingua francas such as English to socio-politically marginalised languages such as Arabic or Kurdish, these characters exploit their knowledge of multiple languages and offer counter-perspectives to dominant ideologies of the role of linguistic diversity in society. Decentring France