Slavic Cinema

The article argues that responses to traumatic past in recent Eastern European horror cinema are informed by a Gothic mode of storytelling as well as Gothic aesthetics. The three movies analyzed in this paper are all preoccupied with national traumas, limits of memory and repressed past: Polish Demon (2015) concerns pre-war Polish-Jewish relations and post-war memory discourses; Russian Night Watch (2004) deals with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the New Russia’s historical placement; The Maus (2017) (a Spanish production placed in Bosnia and Herzegovina) utilizes a familiar West-East binary in order to discuss the lasting influence of the Yugoslav Wars on the pan-European map.