Beyond Historicity: Aesthetic Authenticity in Cinematic Adaptations of Non-/Anti-Realist Fiction.

The article focuses on expanding the concept of authenticity in filmic adaptations beyond the traditional emphasis on historical and biographical source texts to include non-/anti-realist genres such as fantasy, science fiction, and gothic fiction. It proposes an aesthetic authenticity framework characterized by three conditions: metareferential authentication (self-conscious acknowledgment of adaptation and its fictional status), experiential authentication (audience immersion in a plausible storyworld despite genre implausibility), and medial consciousness (awareness of the distinct representational affordances of literary and cinematic media). Through case studies of George Miller’s *Three Thousand Years of Longing* (2022), Denis Villeneuve’s *Arrival* (2016), and various adaptations of Mary Shelley’s *Frankenstein*, the article illustrates how these films achieve authenticity not through fidelity to source texts or historicity but via honest representation, immersive storytelling, and medium-specific creativity. This approach broadens authenticity criticism to encompass diverse adaptation genres and highlights authenticity as an aesthetic effect generated by the adaptation’s form and audience engagement rather than empirical verifiability.