Cineastas afrodescendientes del siglo XXI, entre diáspora, transnacionalismo y post-racialidad

in the last fifteen years (2001-14), the afro-descendant diasporic film has grown, albeit different modes of the different national contexts. The rising success of stars like Denzel Washington, idris Elba and omar Sy, together with the award of an oscar in 2014 to the director Steve McQueen, have allowed the development of a transnational public formed mostly by young afro-descendants that are ever more conscious and willing to see themselves represented by black characters in key roles. From the United States to Europe, we are witnessing the emergence of a more proactive, flexible and pragmatic sensibility on the part of afro-descendant directors that work with different identity politics strategies and different ways of relating to the industry, but with the same objective of empowerment. Reference to national and identity agendas, when made visible, certainly does tend to construct a privileged relationship with an afro-descendant public, but it is also intended to influence the social imaginary and the mainstream market. The effort that some go to in order to remove the burden of representation that still affects afro-descendant directors is noteworthy, as is the complicity of a cinematographic critique that continues to interpret the experience of afro-diasporic directors from a non-continuist, exceptionalist perspective, as an expression of an «imagined community» that is ever more difficult to circumscribe. My aim here is to review, in a non-systematic way, the journey undertaken by the most significant afro-descendant personalities that have emerged or were consolidated in the cinematographic panorama during the period under review, with particular attention to the cases of France, the United Kingdom and the United States.