The Dardenne brothers encounter Enrique Dussel: ethics, eurocentrism and a philosophy for world cinemas

The twenty-first century will see a test of the limits of the communicative power of cinema to reach international audiences. It will require a new understanding of cinematic representations of interpersonal interactions between people from different cultural and economic spheres. This is due to two inter-related phenomenon: the shifting geopolitical landscapes of the post-Cold War world that such intercultural encounters express, and the ever expanding global production of cinema for international markets. The methodology most able to illuminate what is at stake in such encounters, in a manner which can resonate globally, is a philosophical exploration of the ethics of our interactions with others that remains sensitive to concrete historical realities. Here the work of Latin American philosophers like Enrique Dussel, who are as yet entirely absent from cutting-edge discussions in Anglo-American Film Studies, can provide new ways of considering encounters between characters of different economic and cultural heritage