Team members Manuela Ruiz and Elena Velilla participated in the 26th SERCIA Conference, held at the Site Saint-Charles in Montpellier, France, from 2 to 4 September 2026. The conference, organised by the Société pour l’Enseignement et la Recherche du Cinéma Anglophone, focused on the theme “The Environment in English-Language Cinema and Series.”

Manuela Ruiz presented her paper “Lake Reflections: Landscapes of Affect and Displacement in Justin Chon’s Blue Bayou (2021) and Mikko Mäkelä’s A Moment in the Reefs” as part of the panel “Bayous and Still Waters.” The paper examines two contemporary migration films from an ecocritical perspective, arguing that their central natural landscapes — a Louisiana bayou and a Finnish lake — function simultaneously as spaces of trauma and cross-border intimacy, and as real environments of ecological fragility. The analysis situates both films within the contexts of international adoption and refugee crises to explore how cinematic landscape constructs transnational affect and displacement.

Elena Velilla presented her paper “Urban Apocalypse: Conceptualizing Toronto as a Liminal Urban Environment in Last Night,” which analyses Don McKellar’s 1998 film through a spatial and cosmopolitan lens. The paper argues that the film constructs Toronto as a liminal urban environment shaped by shifting borders and ephemeral encounters, tracing how the city’s social and environmental systems gradually disintegrate as the narrative approaches its apocalyptic conclusion.