Metacinema, also meta-cinema, is a mode of filmmaking in which the film informs the audience that they are watching a work of fiction.
Metacinema often references its own production, working against narrative conventions that aim to maintain the audience's suspension of disbelief.
[1] Elements of metacinema include scenes where characters discuss the making of the film or where production equipment and facilities are shown.
Metacinema can be identified in art cinema of the 1960s such as 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963) or The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman, 1969), and in the self-reflexive filmmaking of the French New Wave in films such as Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) and Day for Night (François Truffaut, 1973).
Other examples include F for Fake (Orson Welles, 1973) and Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami, 1994).