Europe’s immigrant populations are often represented on screen by both European and immigrant filmmakers as marginalized in the violent neighborhoods of peripheral urban areas in Paris, Lyon, London, and elsewhere. The film Les Barons (Nabil Ben Yadir, 2009) seeks to counter such stereotypes. The protagonists of Les Barons are multilingual, multicultural young men with proud ties to their families and the ability, at the same time, to straddle cultural registers and global perspectives as they live their cosmopolitan Dasein, or “Being-in-the-world.”
