The term ‘Balkan cinema’ has primarily been employed by film scholars and critics to refer to two different yet interconnected discursive categories: 1) the thematic and stylistic tendencies of a group of films or filmmakers from South-East Europe, 2) the filmic output of countries that are geopolitically, historically, and culturally situated in South-East Europe. The first category is largely qualitative and textually dependent, one that has evaluated cinema through the perspective of its content and artistry, rather than considering it as a dynamic and continuously evolving site of cultural production and exchange beyond national confines. It delineates those films and filmmakers from the region whose works have a determined number of characteristics which conform to the imaginary conceptualisation of the ‘Balkan’ type. This category has also usually been conflated with the artistic expression of a sole creative auteur/genius, a concept that film critics and scholars had associated with a distinct group of internationally acclaimed male film directors, such as Emir Kusturica and Milcho Manchevski. The label ‘Balkan’ itself is a historically and culturally loaded concept, similar to that of the Orient or Orientalism (addressed in Edward Said’s critical work). According to Maria Todorova, ‘Balkan’ originally referred to a mountain or mountainous region and was later adopted as a geographical designation for the Balkan Peninsula, before gradually acquiring ideological and cultural meanings (Todorova 2009, 26–28). Its strongly negative connotations emerged in Western discourse in the early 20th century – particularly around the Balkan Wars and the First World War – when the term became associated with fragmentation, violence, and Europe’s internal ‘other,’ perceptions that were reinforced after the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s (Todorova 2009, 32).

To counter nationalising tendencies and look beyond the borders, Dina Iordanova defined the concept of ‘Balkan cinema’ based on an “inclusive understanding of the Balkans” as a cultural entity rather than a geographical concept, acknowledging a “shared Balkan cultural space” (2006, 6–9). The framework defined by Iordanova belongs to the second category. It looks at the filmic output from the countries situated in South-East Europe and adopts a transnational and intercultural methodology that considers filmmaking and production practices, cultural meanings and other paratextual phenomena. Iordanova and other scholars recognised shared themes and concerns in the cinemas of the region, which were a result of similar issues and socio-historical trajectories, including volatile politics and turbulent changes, semi-Orientalist positioning, perceived either as ‘marginality’ or as a ‘bridge between East and West,’ a religious battleground of Islam vs Christianity, a patriarchal legacy, and economic and cultural dependency. Throughout the 20th century and beyond, these cinemas have been dealing with historical and nation-building epics, war narratives, political violence, and dictatorship, the ‘Balkan national character’ and its associated absurdist humour, ‘village-to-town migration,’ diaspora, migration, and issues of patriarchal society.

In a more recent work, Papadimitriou and Grgić defined Balkan cinema not as a homogeneous or genre-bound category, but as a fluid and dynamic cinematic field shaped by shared geography, intertwined histories, and increasingly prominent transnational collaborations. They argued that Balkan cinema should be understood as an open and inclusive framework that resists reductive national or essentialist definitions, foregrounding cross-border exchange, regional connectivity, and post-2008 industrial and cultural developments (Papadimitriou and Grgić 2020, 1–6, 8–9). This line of thinking emerges from New Cinema History which defines a film not as a self-contained text, but as a historically situated practice shaped by exhibition, circulation, and audience experience. In a similar vein, Grgić (2021) approached Balkan cinema and media through a productive paradox: While rejecting the notion of a stable, unified ‘Balkan cinema’ as an essentialist or geographically fixed category, she nonetheless insisted on its existence as a discursive, historical, and affective formation shaped by shared experiences, aesthetic negotiations, and external modes of recognition, thus acknowledging a need for ‘critical Balkan cinema.’ As a way of concluding, Balkan cinema and media do not emerge as a coherent canon but as a continually reconfigured field at the intersection of transnational practices, self-reflexive critique, the ongoing negotiation of cultural identity within global cinematic economies, and the persistent tension between imposed labels and strategic self-positioning.