From the documentaries of Cambodian director Rithy Panh, and an analysis of the road movie in Quebec, to the transnational roles played by the Maghrebi-French actress Hafsia Herzi, the chapters within this collection explore the notion of exactly what cinéma-monde might be from a multiplicity of (appropriately diverse) perspectives. Although, as Florence Martin has explained, the term itself first appeared in a quite different context as a means of ‘decrying Hollywood's hegemony in global cinema’ (Martin 2016: 462), the starting point for the discussion of cinéma-monde in these pages comes from Bill Marshall's call to engage with a critical framework that could offer a ‘de-centred’ view of francophone cinema (Marshall 2012). It is to this challenge, in their analysis of a range of films and filmmakers linked to the Francosphere, via a combination of cultural and linguistic connections, production contexts, funding structures, geographical locations and reception networks, that the authors and editors of this collection respond. Viewed in the broader academic context of French and francophone studies, this collection also contributes to the ongoing challenge towards the existing hierarchy of French or francophone culture within the discipline, moving away from a centre/periphery binary and towards a perception and practice of ‘French Studies’ that is both transcultural and intercultural (Forsdick 2015).

Despite the range of cultural perspectives and geographical territories covered in the individual chapters of this book, a number of common themes nonetheless emerge. Firstly, the notion of cinéma-monde as a form of encounter and transcultural exchange that takes place within multiple contact zones or interstitial spaces, referred to by the editors of this collection as ‘franco-zones’. Whilst not necessarily free from the imbalances of power inherent in the established binaries of French/francophone, such encounters nonetheless challenge the debilitating notion of francophone as exclusively and immutably ‘other’ to ‘French’. As a number of contributors to this volume make clear, these cinematic contact zones are often constructed in and around border spaces, in narratives that are frequently concerned with movement or the act of migration (legal and illegal) and the consequences of such displacement.