ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the ways in which migrant and non-migrant filmmakers reframe the urban and rural space to create opportunities for a free, although contested, exchange between marginal voices and mainstream Spanish society. It focuses on three documentaries and three fiction films directed by male and female filmmakers of both national and foreign origin. The three documentaries are En construccion, Extranjeras, and El otro lado. The three fiction films are Flores de otro mundo, Retorno a Hansala, and Biutiful. They all expose forms of exclusion by which Spanish authorities and locals try to control space. Each one in different ways and to different extents seeks to produce effects of opening the political space, challenging what French philosopher Jacques Ranciere calls consensus as 'the process underlying today's continual shrinkage of political space'.
