Editorial: Reframing Transnational Cinema in a Globalized Media Landscape

Changsong Wang^*

• Xiamen University, Malaysia, Sepang, Malaysia

This interconnected environment has been radically reshaped by the digital revolution. The proliferation of digital platforms has further complicated this terrain, introducing new modes of circulation and reception that transcend conventional notions of national cinema. These developments call for a critical reframing of transnational cinema that reflects contemporary realities of global media flows. In the current media landscape where digital platforms have dismantled traditional structures of distribution and access, this reframing becomes all the more urgent. As global audiences navigate diverse cinematic offerings on demand, and as content flows in nonlinear, multidirectional patterns, the very definition of transnational cinema requires an update to reflect these new realities of production, distribution, and reception (Tong, 2025;Yang & Higbee, 2024). While technology-driven content flows have expanded opportunities for exposure to foreign and hybrid texts, they also reinforce the hegemonic position of major platforms, particularly in the Global North. Regional digital platforms, especially in the Global South, struggle to compete with these dominant players, although they attempt to cater to local tastes and cultural specificities (Jin, 2025;Wang et al., 2021). This asymmetry underscores the importance of examining transnational cinema not only through an aesthetic and cultural lens but also in terms of infrastructure inequalities and power dynamics in global media ecosystems.The year 2025 has marked a period of rapid and unpredictable social transformation, where the notions of borders and territorial sovereignty are increasingly contested amid a resurging Cold War-like geopolitical climate. In this shifting environment, cross-border cinematic collaboration faces new political and ideological constraints, while transnational film circulation is becoming entangled with issues of national security, cultural sovereignty, and ideological alignment. These dynamics complicate the production and reception of transnational cinema, as states grow more vigilant about the soft power influence embedded within audiovisual narratives. Against this backdrop, national film industries are recalibrating their creativity and distribution strategies to navigate domestic priorities and global market pressures. Though small screen has proved its revenue generating capacity in recent industrial observation (e.g., Söğütlüler & Aday, 2023;Thompson & Garbacz, 2011), film has been a highly visible arena for articulating and defending cultural identities, with cinematic narratives serving not merely as entertainment but vehicles for ideological positioning.A striking example is the release of Ne Zha 2 (directed by Yang Yu, 2025) in China, a film that not only continues the mythological storytelling tradition but also reflects a domestically driven narrative agenda attuned to national pride, cultural self-assertion, and the re-articulation of Chinese identity within global media circuits. Wang et al. (2025) assert that "China's cinematic landscape stands as a testament to its evolving global presence" (p. 2). Simultaneously, Hollywood continues to propagate American cultural values through highbudget fantasy and science fiction franchises. These films, often embedded with ideological undercurrents, reinforce themes of individualism, technological supremacy, and Western exceptionalism (Dittmer, 2011;Latif, 2025;Nelson, 2022). Such cinematic exports, from superhero universes to dystopian fantasies, extend the cultural reach of the United States, maintaining its influence over global popular imagination, despite increasing calls for media pluralism and narrative diversity. This juxtaposition between China's emphasis on cultural nationalism and Hollywood's enduring global dominance exemplifies the complex political terrain in which transnational cinema now operates (Hoyler & Watson, 2018;Song, 2018). As cinema becomes increasingly enmeshed with geopolitical discourse, the field must critically address how cultural production is shaped by global power asymmetries, shifting alliances, and contested imaginaries of nationhood and belonging.To reframe transnational cinema, as this issue sets out to do, is not to discard its earlier definitions, but to build upon them in response to contemporary complexities. The contributions in this issue engage these concerns from multiple perspectives. It also foregrounds regional perspectives that are often underrepresented in dominant discourses. Several articles examine the nuanced cultural negotiations inherent in transnational adaptations and narratives. In their article "Cultural power dynamics and narrative transformation: a comparative analysis of Hollywood film remakes in contemporary Asian cinema", Sonni et al. (2025) examine the phenomenon of Hollywood film remakes in Asian countries between 2015 and 2023. Their study identifies patterns of cultural transformation across several dimensions, including narrative structure, character relationships, visual aesthetics, and thematic emphasis. The findings reveal that Asian remakes do not merely translate source texts but engage in deliberate processes of cultural recalibration, crafting narratives that resonate locally while maintaining global intelligibility. Moreover, the study highlights a shift toward contemplative cinematographic approaches, as Asian remakes often integrate traditional aesthetic principles into their visual styles. By foregrounding these transformations, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of global media flows and the cultural power dynamics that shape them. It argues convincingly that effective film adaptations are not passive reproductions of global narratives, but rather active, hybridized reworkings that reflect complex negotiations of identity, culture, and cinematic form in the transnational moment.Shifting from narrative to legal-cultural frameworks, Song et al. (2025), in their article "Legal Narratives in Chinese, American, British, Japanese, and South Korean Films and Comparative Research on Civic Legal Education", situate their research within a focused analytical framework that examines legal and crime storytelling across cinematic samples from five countries. Adopting a comparative lens grounded in Critical Legal Culture Theory, the study investigates how different legal traditions shape narrative structures and thematic emphases in film. Through a cross-national comparison, the authors analyse the films' narrative strategies, visual representations, and the legal-cultural values implicitly conveyed. Their findings suggest that legal films from countries operating under the Common Law system tend to foreground procedural justice and the struggle for litigation rights, often dramatizing institutional tensions and the adversarial nature of legal processes. In the current climate of heightened geopolitical tension and contested cultural sovereignty, such narratives do more than merely reflect domestic legal values, and they participate in the global negotiation of justice, governance, and social order. This issue also features contributions that directly address the evolving theoretical contours of the field itself. Al-Maliki (2025), in her article "Cultural bridges in film: Evolving Perspectives of Transnational Cinema" argues that transnational cinema is a transformative power that promotes cultural interaction and the formation of trends in reshaping global narratives. Through a review of existing research from 2006 to 2023, the researcher delineates a changing viewpoint of transnational cinema as enriching global cinema. At the same time it challenges national identities and the way that cultural identity is represented and understood. The study points out the emergence in the discourse of themes of hybridity, diasporic identity, cross-border cooperation and worldwide audience reception. In a changing landscape shaped by globalization, interconnectivity and digitization, transnational cinema offers cultural dialogue and mutual understanding. Furthermore, the study finds that as digital platforms and global distribution have broadened its reach, the future development of transnational cinema will depend on the interplay of cross-cultural partnerships, hybrid identities and audience reactions.Extending this theoretical reorientation, this issue includes a perspective article that interrogates how emerging industrial and narrative practices further expand the conceptual boundaries of transnational cinema in the digital age. Rather than advancing empirical generalizations, the article offers an exploratory framework that invites renewed theoretical discussion and future research. Lee and Kim (2025), in their article "Expanding the Concept of Transnational Cinema Through Branded Content in the Digital Age", argue that branded content shaped by hybridity, technological mediation, and layered storytelling can be understood as a distinct cinematic form that circulates across borders. Departing from Jenkins's triad of immersion, convergence, and extension, the article proposes an affective, technological, and interpretive lens to reframe the global circulation of branded narratives. Using the short film Night Fishing (directed by Moon Byoung-Gon, 2024) as a conceptual illustration, the study demonstrates how branded content engages transnational audiences through emotional immersion, narrative hybridity, and dual distribution across theatrical and digital platforms.Individual films continue to serve as powerful case studies for these transnational dynamics. In her perspective article titled,"The Love or To Eat the Super-pig: Bong Joonho's Okja -An Ecocritical and Transnational Perspective", Ang (2025) analyses Bong Joonho's Okja (2017) through ecocritical and transnational perspectives, exploring how the film's portrayal of the bond between a South Korean girl, Mija, and a genetically engineered "superpig" critiques the animal-industrial complex, corporate greed, and human exceptionalism while functioning as a global entertainment product. As a South Korea-US co-production financed by Netflix and realised through cross-border collaborations, Okja exemplifies "transnational eco-cinema", using the tactile realism of its CG creature to evoke both empathy and appetite, thereby confronting viewers with the "meat paradox" and the ethical tensions of industrial livestock farming. By blending ecological critique with Hollywood-style spectacle, the film transcends national and cultural boundaries to interrogate anthropocentric values and provoke reflection on the ethical contradiction embedded with global capitalism. Through coproduction framework, the film situates urgent ecological and ethical concerns within a hyperreal yet narratively compelling space, rendering them accessible across diverse ethnic and cultural contexts.The role of digital platforms as both enablers and constrainers of transnational flow is a primary concern for the field. In their article entitled, "Digital Platforms and the Shifting Landscape of Transnational Cinema", Balan and Jiang (2025) discuss how digital streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ have transformed the production, distribution, authorship, and audience engagement of transnational cinema. They argue that while these platforms democratise access to global films and foster unprecedented cultural exchange, they also introduce constraints through algorithmic governance, corporate consolidation, and platform-specific content strategies. Balan and Jiang frame platformised transnational cinema as a double-edged development expanding cultural reach while also entrenching systemic inequalities in visibility, creative freedom, and market control. They call for a critical rethinking of auteur theory, greater algorithmic transparency, equitable cultural policy, and enhanced media literacy to safeguard diversity and promote genuine cross-cultural exchange in the digital era.Further expanding the discussion on marketing strategies that underpin global film circulation, Lee and Kim (2025), in their study "K-pop Idol Collaboration Enhances Brand Expansion for Disney's Animated Film 'Wish'", conduct a survey to measure Korean viewers' perceptions of the collaboration, levels of fan activity, and the extent of brand expansion. Their study provides valuable insights into how transnational cultural synergy operates in contemporary entertainment marketing. The observe that Wish (directed by Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn, 2023) adopted a K-pop-driven strategy by featuring An Yujin of the girl group IVE in the official music video for the original song "This Wish". Empirical findings from a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis reveal that fan engagement mediated the positive relationship between the collaboration and brand expansion, demonstrating that activities such as media consumption, content creation, and social sharing amplify awareness and favourable attitudes toward the film. The study underscores that cross-industry collaborations between K-pop and international cinema not only revitalize branding strategies for original IPs but also exemplify a hybrid cultural model which redefines the dynamics of transnational cinema and reflects the growing influence of fan-driven participatory culture in the global media ecosystem.Finally, expanding the focus to transmedia storytelling, Yoon (2025) note, in the review article titled, "Transmedia Storytelling : Expanding Formatted Contents in Global", notices that many entertainment contents around the world are going through transmedia. This review article explores transmedia storytelling as a key framework for understanding the globalization and localization of formatted entertainment contents in contemporary media industries. It argues that format trade-the licensing and adaptation of television and entertainment programs across borders-has evolved into a major mechanism of transmedia expansion, where narratives are reconstructed across multiple media and cultural contexts to create immersive and participatory storyworlds. Drawing from case analyses of 14 representative formats, including MasterChef, Big Brother, Dragon's Den/Shark Tank, I Can See Your Voice, and Impractical Jokers, the article identifies some core storytelling strategies that characterize how transmedia operates in formatted content. Yoon situates these dynamics within theoretical frameworks by Marie-Laure Ryan (2020) and David Herman (2021), emphasizing narrative as an interactive cognitive and cultural process. Through this lens, formatted contents emerge as transmedia ecosystems that not only transmit stories across borders but also mediate cultural values, audience participation, and industrial strategies. Above all, this issue looks into the issues and arguments which address platformised and geopolitically entangled transnational cinema as a new phase in the politics of global cultural circulation. From existing studies to the articles published under this issue's theme, the dimensions of creative expression, infrastructural control, and ideological influence are intertwined and inseparable. Though it is no longer a new topic, the rise of streaming services, the recalibration of national industries under geopolitical pressure, and the increasing visibility of non-Western cinematic voices have not displaced earlier power asymmetries; rather, they have reconfigured them into algorithmic and infrastructural forms that determine what cultural expressions travel, how they are framed, and for whom they are made visible. The editors contend that reframing transnational cinema requires moving beyond analyses of cross-border production and narrative hybridity to interrogate the platform-driven architectures of cultural power that govern circulation, access, and meaning-making. Such a reframing demands an understanding of cinema as both an aesthetic practice and a contested political space, where national self-fashioning, corporate imperatives, and audience agency converge in shaping the stories that define our shared identity and our global media moment.Though no article under this issue explicitly addresses diaspora cinema, recent films depicting the socio-political struggles of communities in war-torn regions over multiple generations have captured the attention of the corresponding author of this editorial. Many of these works have been showcased at internationally renowned film festivals, signalling their resonance within the global cultural circuit. For instance, To a Land Unknown (2024), directed by the Mahdi Fleifel from UAE, was nominated at Cannes, San Sebastián, and the Gotham Film Festival; All That's Left of You (2025), directed by Palestinian-American filmmaker Cherien Dabis, has similarly drawn attention for its poignant engagement with displacement and identity. The production teams behind such works often present a cosmopolitan composition that, beyond the formal credits, reflects a deeply rooted transnational consciousness. This consciousness is embedded within the films' aesthetic choices, narrative structures, and ethical commitments, legitimating their articulation of a shared ground of humanity that transcends national and cultural boundaries. Diasporic identification, as a lived condition, demands an imaginative leap beyond the confines of one's immediate experience. It entails what Ezra and Rowden (2006) describe as the "postnational version of the 'imagined community'" (p. 8), a mode of belonging shaped not by territorial borders but by shared histories of displacement, resistance, and cultural negotiation. Such films do not merely represent the diaspora; they enact it as a cinematic condition, which is at once aesthetically transnational and politically situated. In doing so, they offer a counter-narrative to dominant media flows, positioning the diasporic subject as both a witness to and an agent within the geopolitically entangled circuits of contemporary transnational cinema.Lastly, the world embraces its dynamic and accelerated development with multiple tones of narrative (i.e., Rayman, 2021;Sato, 2019), particularly as bloc politics increasingly intersects with economic and political confrontations. In this climate, cross-border coproductions are no longer merely vehicles for creative collaboration or market expansion; they have become complex sites where cultural diplomacy, economic negotiation, and ideological contestation converge. Such projects inevitably bear the imprint of the geopolitical moment in which they are conceived, as they are shaped by shifting alliances, contested trade agreements, and the recalibration of cultural policies in response to global tensions. While co-productions may promise the blending of aesthetic traditions and the pooling of creative resources, they also raise critical questions about agency, representation, and the asymmetries of power embedded in the infrastructures that enable them. The framing of narratives, the allocation of resources, and even the terms of distribution often reflect broader strategic interests rather than purely artistic imperatives. Thus, in navigating the contemporary landscape of transnational cinema, one must acknowledge that co-productions operate simultaneously as sites of intercultural exchange and as instruments of soft power (Fong & Lim, 2025;Parc, 2020;Zhai, 2024). They exemplify the ways in which cinema, whether platformised, diasporic, or geopolitically entangled, continues to function as both a creative endeavour and a contested arena of cultural politics in the twenty-first century.