French cinema and the political

The years since 1995 have seen the return of the political to French cinema, but this is a cinema that can no longer feed off an elaborated leftist project, and that must therefore take new forms. After a brief contextualization, this article seeks to account for the novelty and effectiveness of this cinema. It first delineates its main contours, and then turns to the work of Zizek, Balibar and Ranciere to cast light on certain of its key features. Zizek is used to engage with the capacity of the films to reconnect 'subjective' violences to the systemic; Balibar is used to explore the newness of the films spatial economy and the way they deal with the 'unworldly' universalism of contemporary capitalism; Ranciere's concept of the sensorium is mobilized to underscore the productive work the films do as they contest dominant visibilities and audibilities.