New queer Greece: thinking identity through Constantine Giannaris's From the Edge of the City and Ana Kokkinos's Head On

Reading From the Edge of the City and Head On as world examples of New Queer Cinema, this article shows how the role they assign to sexuality crucially inflects their perspectives on diaspora and Greekness. From the Edge of the City undermines the conventional narrative of successful Greek repatriations by presenting a group of Russian-Greek young men negotiating both their position within Greek society and their framing by a new queer (cinematic) gaze. Head On screens queer desire as a strategy which finally unsettles the traditional space (and the accepted narratives) of Greek-Australia and disrupts the heteronormative temporality of Greek emigrations. Both films thus present us with new understandings of movement and ethnic belonging they suggest genderfuck and nationfuck as positions which dismantle the traditional framing of national and gender identities and propose a new queer(ed) Greece as a fluid space-off for the radical rethinking of identity.