“Should I Stay or Should I Go?” The Promise of Europe and Female Identity in Francesca (2009)

Starting from the premise that intra-EU migration has generated a repertoire of representations, narratives and stances in Romanian public imagination, within a transnational context, the present article explores an area that has attracted little scholarly attention to date: Romanian New Cinema films that tackle this theme. The analysis focuses on “Francescaˮ (Bobby Păunescu, 2009), a film centred on a female character who is on the verge of deciding whether to emigrate or not. It examines how female identity and agency are shaped in connection to symbolic constructions of the “West” as a destination space for Romanian migrants, through modalities of expression specific to the New Romanian Cinema.