Cultural “Transfer” in European Science Fiction Cinema: From Elia Barceló’s Mil euros por tu vida to Damir Lukačević’s Film Adaptation Transfer

This article examines the way in which the future of Europe is imagined in European cinema, especially in European speculative fiction and science fiction. The first part of this article discusses the dynamics and parameters within which European science fiction and European science fiction cinema navigate when they imagine the future face of Europe and the construction of pan-European identities. The second part of the article focuses on one example as a case study of cultural transfer to illustrate these processes: Damir Lukačević’s film Transfer (2010, Germany), an adaptation of Mil euros por tu vida (2003), a short story by the Spanish science fiction writer Elia Barceló. The discussion pays attention to the cultural translation process from literature to film, from a Spanish to a German context, and to the changing image of the future. In drawing on other examples from contemporary European science fiction cinema for comparison, the analysis shows that both texts align with a wider European discourse on migration and race and, more specifically, are examples of a European imaginary that envision the future of Europe as shaped by Europe’s colonial past, persistent racism, and continuing exploitation of the Global South.