Treading New Paths

Europe today is mobile. High-speed railroads, low-cost airlines and a steadily growing network of motorways facilitate the constant movement of Europeans to an extent unimaginable before 1990. In Central and Eastern Europe, cross-border mobility was highly regulated during most of the time from the end of the Second World War until the fall of the Berlin Wall. The road movie genre, predicated on mobility, stands in stark contrast to the restrictive policies of movement behind the Iron Curtain. For natural reasons it was not until the regimes changed that the road movie developed in an Eastern European context. ¹ Following the demise of the communist regimes, the film industries in Central and Eastern Europe also embraced the genre.