Filmré

Filmré is a neologism in film criticism describing a hybrid stylistic practice in cinema that intentionally blends archival imagery with contemporary digital techniques to evoke a constructed reconstruction of reality. The term is formed as a portmanteau of film and the French-sounding suffix -ré, and first appears in critical discourse in the early 2010s.

Films identified as filmré typically juxtapose found or archival footage with new CGI or digital compositing, create a self-reflexive commentary on media fabrication, and apply deliberate aesthetic markers such as grain, luminance, frame rate, and aspect ratio to signal past and present. The approach foregrounds the viewer's awareness of editing and representation rather than claiming transparent realism.

The concept emerged in scholarly essays and boutique film festivals as a descriptive label rather than a formal theory. It has been used to discuss works in independent, experimental, and documentary-film contexts that invert traditional archival reconstruction by showing it as a deliberate construction.

Critics are divided in their assessment. Proponents argue that filmré exposes the constructed nature of media and broadens the vocabulary of documentary and art cinema, while detractors worry that the term can be vague and conflate style with substance.

Related concepts include hybrid documentary, found footage, meta-cinema, digital restoration, and postmodernism.