History
Document Type
Article
Abstract
This article is about the recent transformation of two powerful, paradoxical, and inseparable narratives of progress that developed in the postwar period: aesthetic autonomy and Holocaust remembrance. As far-right and illiberal parties have gained power across Europe, they adapted these foundational narratives of the liberal-democratic West to assert their own legitimacy and to reimagine the cultural inclinations of the European Union. This article examines how this process has taken place in the reception of Jonathan Glazer's Zone of Interest (2023) and Agnieszka Holland's Green Border (2023)—both international co-productions produced during the repressive eight-year reign of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in Poland. A close reading of these films and their reception in different contexts, exposes a world more complicated than one-dimensional dichotomies between the liberal and the illiberal. Likewise, the reception of the two films makes apparent the entanglement of the national and transnational, as well as a process of translation and mistranslation that takes place as cultural materials move across geographical and ideological boundaries. Understanding such dynamics helps us to comprehend the options for criticism available to artists working within repressive contexts. © The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press.
Publication Title
Central European History
Publication Date
2026
ISSN
0008-9389
DOI
10.1017/S0008938925101337
Keywords
cultural diplomacy, film, Holocaust film, Holocaust memory, illiberalism, liberalism, Poland, The Zone of Interest, Green Border
Repository Citation
Tanzer, Frances, "Film in Illiberal Times: Poland’s Public Memory and the European Union" (2026). History. 128.
https://commons.clarku.edu/historyfac/128
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright Conditions
Tanzer, Frances. "Film in Illiberal Times: Poland’s Public Memory and the European Union." Central European History (2026): 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008938925101337
