Subjectivity, Space, Shame: Analysing the ‘in-between’ in Stephan Streker’s A Wedding and Iram Haq’s What Will People Say

This paper explores the affective qualities of cinema and builds on the growing body of research on the intersections of film studies, diasporic identities, and affect. It examines the narratives and experiences of second-generation immigrant Pakistani women: 18-year-old Zahira in Stephan Streker’s film A Wedding (2016) and 16-year-old Nisha in Iram Haq’s What Will People Say (2017). While the former is inspired by the honour killing of Sadia Sheikh in Belgium in 2007, the latter is inspired by Haq’s own life in Norway and Pakistan. Through an approach informed by intermedial processes, the purpose of the study is to understand if and how an inquiry into the lives of girls like Zahira and Nisha contributes to a broader social and cultural understanding of ethnic identities in multicultural European societies. The paper argues that diasporic subjectivities are built through processes that are intercultural and dynamic in nature. Moreover, it further explores how the films create sites of mutuality through the affective and traveling qualities of shame. The study finds that while the material aspect of intermediality contributes to perpetuation of stereotypes (often against an ethnic group), culture as media in its intermedial rendering confronts and challenges such reductive practices.