From Writing to Image: Reconfiguration of the Immigrant Figure Between Novelistic Text and Cinematic Representation in Le Gone du Chaâba and La Graine et le Mulet

Abstract

This article examines the mechanisms by which the figure of the North
African immigrant is reconfigured in the transition from the novelistic text to the
cinematographic work, through two foundational corpora of immigration literature
and cinema in France.
Le Gone du Chaâba by Azouz Begag (1986), adapted for cinema by Christophe
Ruggia in 1997, and Abdellatif Kechiche's La Graine et le Mulet (2007) represent
two essential milestones in the representation of the migratory experience. Drawing
on the tools of comparative narratology, image semiology, and cultural studies, this
study analyzes the identity construction of the immigrant character, the strategies of
intercultural mediation, and the political and aesthetic stakes inherent in generic
transposition. The aim is to demonstrate how cinema does not merely translate a
literary narrative into visual form, but proceeds to a genuine rewriting of migrant
subjectivity, oscillating between collective memory, the quest for integration, and
the affirmation of a plural identity.