Imágenes forenses. Sinergias entre creación audiovisual e investigación periodística en la práctica documental contemporánea
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article aims to define the basic characteristics of a contemporary audiovisual trend: “forensic cinema”. It refers to a body of films based on journalistic or legal investigative criteria, which seek to reconstruct events of social or historical significance through the primary use of the montage of unaltered audiovisual evidence, with the aim of influencing public debates on major current issues, such as historical memory or human rights violations. At the heart of forensic cinema lies the use of what is known as “evidence vérité” – audiovisual clues that may help to shed light on an incident, be it an unsolved mystery or, as is usually the case, a biased or manipulated account of the facts. This type of cinema, which engages with forms of investigative and exposé journalism, as well as with the poetics of documentary theatre, constitutes a radical and innovative model for dealing with factual material due to its hybridization of media languages and its use of a wide range of techniques for processing audiovisual evidence. Through a textual and contextual analysis of two emblematic films representing this trend—Rubber Coated Steel (Lawrence Abu Hamdan, 2016) and Incident (Bill Morrison, 2023)—, both inspired by the investigations of the leading interdisciplinary research group Forensic Architecture, this paper aims to highlight the strengths and limitations of this audiovisual practice.
DOI: 10.5209/emp.110694
Authors: Gabriel Doménech González, Ying Tan
Institution: Camilo José Cela University
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7223132386