Comunicazione, mediazione, immunizzazione: Arrival di Villeneuve

Dennis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) has a key topic the encounter with the other and the mediations mandatory for this very encounter could be the occasion for a radical transformation of the subject, instead of a moment of immunitary closeness. By analysing the complex theoretical and formal structure put in place by the movie, this paper resorts to three keywords in the recent history of critical visual theory – that is, medium, communication, munus (e.g., gift in latin) – to show the exemplary nature of cinematic narrative in the understanding of contemporary biopolitical processes.