Cinema’s globality, as scholars such as Dudley Andrew (2010) and Lúcia Nagib (2006) note, is not a contemporary development but a foundational condition. From early film circulation across continents to the mutual influences among European avant-garde, Asian modernist, Latin American revolutionary, and African postcolonial cinemas, film has always functioned as a site of cultural exchange. World Cinema Spotlights embraces this history by curating works that highlight these transnational lines of influence and dialogue. Each installment will explore how particular films participate in what Arjun Appadurai calls “global cultural flows,” revealing patterns of aesthetic migration and reinterpretation.

The series emphasizes cinema’s inherent humanism—the capacity of moving images to bridge differences through shared emotional experience. André Bazin’s writings on realism remind us that cinema’s essence lies in its ability to capture the world with empathy and presence, offering viewers access to perspectives beyond their own. Similarly, Laura Marks’s concept of “haptic visuality” underscores how non-Western and diasporic cinemas create intimate encounters with cultural memory, inviting audiences into embodied and affective forms of knowing. By foregrounding such works, World Cinema Spotlights affirms that human diversity is not an obstacle but a pathway to deeper cinematic understanding.

At the heart of the series is a celebration of storytelling and the key texts—both films and theoretical contributions—that have expanded cinematic language. From the montage principles of Soviet cinema, which influenced global practices of political filmmaking, to the long-take poetics of Chinese and Iranian art cinema, which cultivate contemplative spectatorship, the series will trace how local innovations acquire global significance. Works by filmmakers such as Ousmane Sembène, Agnès Varda, Satyajit Ray, Abbas Kiarostami, Wong Kar-wai, and Lucrecia Martel exemplify how stories deeply rooted in specific cultural contexts can achieve universal emotional and philosophical impact.

World Cinema Spotlights also engages critical frameworks that challenge hierarchical distinctions between “world,” “national,” and “global” cinema. As Hamid Naficy’s work on accented cinema demonstrates, migrant and exilic filmmakers create hybrid cinematic forms that blur borders and reshape collective imaginaries. By incorporating such perspectives, the series positions itself not merely as a showcase but as a platform for rethinking how film circulates, communicates, and creates meaning across cultures.

Ultimately, World Cinema Spotlights envisions cinema as a shared human endeavor that thrives on exchange, empathy, and imaginative connection. Through curated screenings, discussions, and critical essays, the series invites audiences to experience the richness of world cinema as an ever-evolving tapestry—one that reminds us that the local, when authentically rendered, is always already universal.