Solmatalua. 2022. Brazil. Directed by Rodrigo Ribeiro-Andrade. North American premiere. In Portuguese, Yoruba; English subtitles. 15 min.
É Noite na América (It Is Night in America). 2022. Italy/France/Brazil. Directed by Ana Vaz. In Portuguese; English subtitles. New York Premiere. 66 min.
Ana Vaz’s spellbinding first feature was filmed in the Brasilia Zoo, which has been a refuge for animals displaced by urban development since the inception of Brazil’s modernist capital city. Alternating between close-ups of the resident owls, wolves, capybaras, and giant anteaters and dizzying skylines of Vaz’s native Brasilia, the filmmaker crafts a fable of animals venturing into the urban twilight to reclaim their habitat. Shot on expired 16mm film stock, using “day-for-night” techniques, the film’s deep midnight blues and immersive sounds have the makings of a grand anti-Western that reflects on displacement and extinction through other-than-human perspectives. It Is Night in America is preceded by Solmatalua, a “a dreamlike Afro-Diasporic odyssey” that reclaims untold histories through archives and landscapes at the crossroads of time.