Our Own People? Repatriation, Citizenship, Belonging

Abstract

Amongst the diverse populations migrating to Greece in the 1990s were also thousands of so-called ‘co-ethnic’ Orthodox Greeks from Southern Albania and the Black Sea Region (also known as the Pontic region) who were summoned back to their alleged homeland. Three films have dealt with the agenda of repatriation and its problematic ideological background: From the Snow/Ap to Hioni (1993), From the Edge of the City/Ap tin Akri tis Polis (1998) and Xenia (2014) expose the essentialisms of national identity, evoking simultaneously the bewilderment of co-ethnics, who were ultimately welcomed as strangers, and their struggles to assimilate. Despite many differences in form, all three films put the very notion of repatriation to the test and tackle head-on patriarchal discourses that figured prominently in the country’s nationalist program. The author thus maintains a focus on the potential of Greek immigration films to radically screen repatriation and to forge an inclusive definition of Greekness.