Political meaning of the imaginary of genre cinema in two “banlieue” films

This article analyzes the use of transnational genres, mainly gangster cinema, in two “banlieue” films, Dheepan (Jacques Audiard, 2015) and Divines (Houda Benyamina, 2016). While several critics, notably in the Cahiers du cinéma, severely criticized the two directors for the political meaningless caused by their use of genres, this article rather shows how these films seek to remap the social imaginary of the projects through the imaginary of genre cinemas.