CFP: Utopias and dystopias in cinema: Metropolis (2027), one hundred years later (Deadline: July 31, 2026)

2026-04-21

The year 2027 marks the centenary of the release of Metropolis, a monumental cinematic work directed by Fritz Lang and written by Thea von Harbou. A hundred years later, the political themes, as well as the hopeful and apocalyptic visions of society addressed in the film, remain relevant today.

The film was one of the most ambitious productions in German cinema, encapsulating the aesthetic and ideological tensions of its time. Its influence on the imagination of science fiction and dystopia reaches to nowadays and is immeasurable, as this work brings together various narrative, imaginative and mythological traditions, establishing a visual and architectural legacy that has shaped the history of cinema.

Besides its important role in the history of cinema, Metropolis addresses central issues such as the relationship between technology and the body, the symbolic organisation of urban space, the social fragmentation of individuals in the post-war period, the role played by women in Weimar society, and the issue of artificial intelligence, which was already beginning to emerge at that time. Its evocative potential resides, to a large extent, in its transdisciplinary nature, bringing together both fantastical and science-fiction imaginaries, experimentally intertwining architecture, literature and dance, amongst other artistic expressions, to make them part of the avant-garde spirit that predominantly pulsed through the early days of cinema.

This dossier invites submissions that approach Metropolis from analytical, historical and comparative perspectives, taking into account the relevance of its legacy and the resonance its discourse has in our time. Particular consideration will be given to proposals that explore its symbolic dimension, its capacity to shape subsequent audiovisual dystopian imagery, and its relevance to current socio-cultural forms.

The main thematic areas under consideration are:

  • Dystopian/utopian dimension: the legacy of Metropolis in projecting imperfect futures
  • Metropolis and contemporary science fiction: relationships, connections and influences
  • The automaton, the double and forms of the posthuman in Metropolis
  • Gender and the body: feminine representations in Metropolis
  • Influences and reinterpretations of Metropolis in contemporary audiovisual culture
  • City and architecture: symbolism of modern space
  • Technology and the body: alienation, mechanisation and subjectivity in Metropolis
  • The symbolic as a form of communication: Metropolis and religious and political symbolism
  • Metropolis in the Weimar context: social imagination and ideological tensions
  • Metropolis’s relationship with Expressionist cinema
  • Metropolis as a whole: dialogues between the novel and the film

 

This thematic dossier is coordinated by Marcos Jiménez González (Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, University of Zaragoza) and Luis N. Sanguinet (Faculty of Communication Sciences, Rey Juan Carlos University).

Marcos Jiménez González holds a degree and a PhD in Philosophy and is a lecturer in Aesthetics and Art Theory at the University of Zaragoza. He has been a postdoctoral researcher at the CSIC Institute of Philosophy and at the Complutense University, as well as a lecturer at Rey Juan Carlos University. Author of Romanticismo, técnica y poder en la arquitectura de Albert Speer (Ápeiron, 2018) and Fritz Lang y el expresionismo (Shangrila, 2022), he has edited collective works and monographs and published in academic and popular journals on cinema, philosophy and audiovisual communication. His research focuses on the dialogues between narrative and visual arts, the relationship between cinema and ideology, and the scope of aesthetic imaginaries, centring on avant-garde cinema and its influence on other narrative forms.

Luis Nahuel Sanguinet García is a Research Fellow at Rey Juan Carlos University and is writing his doctoral thesis on the symbolism of the door in German Expressionist cinema, under the joint supervision of Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Torres of the URJC and Prof. Dr. Malte Hagener of Phillips University Marburg. He holds a degree in Audiovisual Communication from the URJC, a Master’s in Audiovisual Production and Distribution from the HDM El Submarino art school, and a Master’s in Philosophical Criticism and Argumentation from the Autonomous University of Madrid. He has worked on the supervision of audiovisual dossiers for the Observatorio del Futuro and as an illustrator for the publisher Ápeiron Ediciones. He is the author of Aproximaciones estéticas a la puerta (Ápeiron, 2016) and a chapter in De Gran Hermano a El Juego del Calamar (Cátedra, 2024). He has been part of the ATAD Research Group (Analysis of Audiovisual Text) at the Complutense University of Madrid and currently collaborates with the INECO Consolidated Research Group (Innovation, Education and Communication), linked to the URJC.

The deadline for submitting full, original articles is July 31, 2026.

Submitted articles will be subject to a selection process (by the editors) and double-blind peer review (by external reviewers). Texts must be no longer than 8,000 words and include, in Portuguese and English (and also in Spanish, if that is the language of the text): a title, an abstract of up to 300 words and a maximum of 6 keywords.

Before submitting your article, please review all the instructions here: https://aim.org.pt/ojs/index.php/revista/submit-paper

If you have any questions, please contact: aniki@aim.org.pt