Cinema of Cape Verde

Cape Verde are making headlines in the 2026 FIFA World Cup after going through their group unbeaten, holding Spain 0-0, Uruguay 2-2 and Saudi Arabia 0-0. The key point here is that Cape Verde were unbeaten against two former World Cup champions. Next, Cape Verde will take on defending World Cup Champion Argentina in the Round of 32. Long before I knew of their soccer team, I came across films from the nation.

Films set in Cape Verde

The first instance of Cape Verde that I came across in cinema was Pedro Costa’s Casa De Lava (1994).

Casa De Lava, courtesy Grasshopper films

Costa’s filming on Cape Verde led to the location of his next few films. While filming on Cape Verde, he was asked by the locals to take their letters to relatives living in Fontainhas, on the outskirts of Lisbon. Costa took those letters to Fontainhas and the rest is cinematic history with Costa’s Fontainhas Trilogy.

The next film that I saw in Cape Verde was a Portuguese production, Djon Africa. It was a film that I adored and programmed for my film festival in 2018.

Djon Africa (2018, Portugal, Filipa Reis/João Miller Guerra)

In Djon Africa, Miguel Moreira’s laid-back Portuguese life takes a turn when someone tells him he looks like his father. Miguel doesn’t know anything about his father or his roots. When his grandmother reveals that his father was banished to Cape Verde, Miguel makes a quick decision to visit Cape Verde and track down his father. With minimal information and money, Miguel’s charm ensures no door in Cape Verde is closed for him. As he goes deeper into the island, fuelled by the national drink grogue, reality and dreams slowly blend resulting in a life-changing journey.

Co-written by Pedro Pinho (The Nothing Factory), Djon Africa is a playful film that highlights the picturesque landscape of Cape Verde and raises relevant questions about identity for those whose lives are caught between two nations.

Djon Africa came out in 2018 but its relevance can apply to many of the players of the current Cape Verde soccer team, many of whom were born elsewhere but are representing Cape Verde in the World Cup.

Appropriately, there is also a soccer film set in Cape Verde.

Dribbling Fate (Fintar O Destino, 1998, Fernando Vendrell)

Dribbling Fate, Courtesy of California Newsreel

Mané (Carlos Germano) has lived his entire life in São Vicente (Cape Verde), yet that life is tinged with regret and disappointment due to a career path not taken. Mané was a soccer player who was invited to play to Benfica in 1959 along with his teammate and friend Américo. Mané was a goalie while Américo was a striker. Mane stayed behind to look after a tavern while Américo went on to get fame at Benfica. Not much happens in São Vicente. The tavern has the same locals, most of whom can’t pay for their drinks including the national drink Grogue, who visit the place to pass away the time while listening to Benfica games on the radio.

Mané trains young kids who play soccer and he is determined to ensure a promising local kid, Kalu, gets the chance to play for Benfica and isn’t stuck on the island. Plus, Mané wants a chance to watch Benfica play in the cup final. So Mané cracks open his life savings to undertake a journey to Lisbon, much to the annoyance of his wife who he leaves behind, to watch the game. Mané also visits his son, Alberto, who he hasn’t seen in years. Alberto has no interest in football but Mané is determined to go see the game on his own yet he is not street smart for life in Lisbon.

Dribbling Fate has a dreamy music background to it, much like many international films of the 1990s, and that gives the feel a hopeful feel even though things don’t go as planned for Mané. The film has a good heart to it and incorporates loving shots of the island.

Cinema of Cape Verde

More than a decade ago, it was tough to find films from Cape Verde. However, that appears to be changing. There is a “Nova Vaga Cabo Verde” (Cape Verdean New Cinema) which has led to more works appearing at film festivals around the world.

The following is a useful link to hunt down more films from Cape Verde: Contemporary Cape Verdean Cinema.

Kimi Takesue's Observational Cinema

Spotlight on the following films of Kimi Takesue:

Where Are You Taking Me? (2010)

Looking for Adventure (2013, short film 43 min)

Onlookers (2023)

Cinema is a constant discovery. The more one sees films, the more one realizes how many more worthy films await. I hadn’t heard or read anything about Kimi Takesue until the recent release of her films via the Criterion Channel.

This turned out to be a worthy discovery as Takesue’s unique perspective allows a new entry point to understand travel and cultures as the three films are set in Uganda (Where Are You Taking Me?), Peru (Looking for Adventure) and Laos (Onlookers) respectively.

Why do you travel?

The Peruvian and Laos set films raise insightful questions about why people travel and the films break down each location into a few essentials such as common tourist attractions and places where people shop or eat. The gaze in Looking for Adventure and Onlookers is one-way only. The camera is mostly fixed in a single spot and we witness people walking on the street or standing still in the distance. Majority of the people aren’t aware of the camera, which is why they go about their activities normally. This applies equally to both local street vendors, selling food, snacks, drinks or local souvenirs, and also to tourists trying to take the same picture as others in their group. 

Looking for Adventure (2013), courtesy of Kimi Takesue website

Onlookers (2023) is more recent while Looking for Adventure (2013) was filmed a few years after smart phones became commonplace.

Onlookers (2023), courtesy Kimi Takesue website

Our world is packed with Instagram and social media pictures of travelers posting the exact same picture as countless others have before them. Everyone wants their selfie or picture of the same locations. This is apparent in both Looking for Adventure and Onlookers. People have different purposes of taking the pictures. For some, it is a documentation of their travel, for others it is more about posting on social media for others to see. There is memory and nostalgia associated with these images. Not everyone in these movies takes images with a camera or smartphone but many do. Given the cost of travel and how some people save money for years to visit a place, one can’t blame their image taking.

Looking for Adventure and Onlookers raises other brilliant contemplative questions about travel. More than the images, why do people travel? And when they do, what do they do in the locations? And what do they buy? Laos and Peru are on separate sides of the world yet in both of these locations, and countless others around the world, the interaction between locals and foreigners comes down to a few similar sale transactions: an artistic artefact (locally made or mass-produced), jewellery, pots, clothing, bags, postcards, photographs, magnets, small toys and dolls. Majority of these artefacts sold could be indigenous or made by local native people (villages or non-urban centers).

The question about why we travel may seem obvious but Kimi Takesue’s films forces us to consider them due to her distanced observational style. There are no talking heads or voice over narration to nudge viewers in one specific direction nor is there apparent dialogue. We observe and can form our own views on events.

Cultural Lens

Where Are You Taking Me? is a different film altogether from Looking for Adventure and Onlookers and those differences are what makes Where Are You Taking Me? not as strong as the other two. Where Are You Taking Me? focuses on events around Kampala, from the streets to sporting events to documenting about civil war survivors. The film showcases Uganda and documents the country for others to see. There aren’t any tourists visiting the location and we don’t get to see the exchange of two cultures. However, the film’s title makes sense later on as the directors tells curious kids watching the camera where the film will be shown (US). That admission by the director ensures this film isn’t a one-way gaze and opens up a two-way mirror into us seeing the locals and on the same hand, the locals being aware of those on the other side of the planet.

Where Are You Taking Me? (2010), courtesy of Kimi Takesue website

Wes Anderson's Cinema

Spotlight on Wes Anderson’s films & books

Films (in order of release):

1. Bottle Rocket (1996)

2. Rushmore (1998)

3. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

4. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

5. The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

6. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

7. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

8. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

9. Isle of Dogs (2018)

10. The French Dispatch (2021)

11. Asteroid City (2023)

12. The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

Note: the collection of Short films The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (2024) are not considered as part of this spotlight.

Books:

Wes Anderson: The Archives (2025)

Accidentally Wes Anderson, Vol. 1 (2020)

Accidentally Wes Anderson, Vol. 2 (2024)

Wes Anderson’s unique style

Show a frame of a Wes Anderson film to majority of movie fans and they would be able to instantly recognize it as that of a Wes Anderson. This is true even of non-cinephiles or non avid film-lovers.

A few standout elements:

The Grand Budapest Hotel, courtesy Criterion

Distinct visual palette: pastel, muted green or yellow palettes are telltale signs that you are looking at a Wes Anderson film.

The Darjeeling Limited, courtesy Criterion

Precise framing: the highly controlled visual frames of a Wes Anderson film standout with characters and objects in the center of a frame. This distinctive look is instantly recognizable especially when coupled with the character’s deadpan or expressionless face.

The Grand Budapest Hotel, courtesy Criterion

Stylish production design: the sets, costumes in a Wes Anderson film are just gorgeous to look at and evoke story-book imagery or they are playful variations of periodic pieces.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, courtesy Criterion

Interconnected stories: Wes Anderson’s films, starting with his third feature The Royal Tenenbaums, feature multiple interconnected stories with a large ensemble of popular recognizable actors.

The visual elements in Wes Anderson’s film have even led to the Accidentally Wes Anderson project, including two book collections, where photographers take pictures of real-life locations that look like they could be from a Wes Anderson film. Wes Anderson penned a forward for Vol.2 and mentioned that he had been to only 1 place highlighted in the book. Some of the locations have existed for thousands of years. That indicates the range of Wes Anderson’s influences for his films or that we have all been living in a Wes Anderson world.

Of course, Wes Anderson’s visual style wasn’t always recognizable especially in his first two films. His cinema can be broken down into three phases.

Wes Anderson 1.0: quirky comedies, fiercely independent

Films in this phase: Bottle Rocket (1996), Rushmore (1998)

Wes Anderson’s debut feature Bottle Rocket is also the acting debut of brothers Owen and Luke Wilson, a collaboration that have enriched many of Anderson’s features. Anderson co-wrote the script with Owen Wilson. The film’s visual style is more in keeping with American indie cinema of the 1990s but the quirky humour is present.

Rushmore starts the first steps towards the contemporary Wes Anderson style with Jason Schwartzman (playing the character of Max Fisher) starting his collaboration with Wes Anderson. The film contains many shots which depict collection of unique objects, as aspect that is part and parcel of his subsequent films. The story flows like a conventional film although the depiction of Max in the center of the frame is the start of Anderson’s future framing style. The humour isn’t deadpan yet but a variation of quirky.

Wes Anderson 2.0: visual style emerges along with larger ensemble

Films in this phase: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Isle of Dogs (2018)

The Royal Tenenbaums is the first film of what we know recognize as Wes Anderon’s style: stylish visual palette, deadpan humour, presence of interconnected stories.

The films in this phase depict a narrative arc via the lens of Wes Anderson’s style. That means, there is still focus on the story and characters while Anderson’s style enhances the material or acts as garnish. The locations still manage to shine through such as the Indian landscape in The Darjeeling Limited.

Wes Anderson 3.0: film takes place in Wes Anderson land

Films in this phase: The French Dispatch (2021), Asteroid City (2023), The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

The three features in this phase stand-out as they don't boast a coherent narrative arc. Instead, the films are a series of interconnected vignettes where the individual pieces, no matter how brilliant, don’t add up to a whole. The locations for the films don’t matter as everything takes place in a Wes Anderson designed studio, with each frame tightly controlled. These 3 films perfectly conform to the Wes Anderson style of cinema at the expense of a story or a narrative arc. As a result, the form is more important than the content. That means, the purpose of the jokes, various segments doesn’t serve the overall story but is merely there to align with the overall Wes Anderson style.

The French Dispatch is unwatchable at times, Asteroid City is only marginally better and The Phoenician Scheme shows signs of life only due to the presence of Benicio del Toro whose deadpan expressions highlight that Wes Anderson can fit any actor in his cinematic style.

Ranking Wes Anderson’s films in order of preference:

1. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

A delightful film which is enhanced by Wes Anderson’s style. George Clooney’s voice truly makes the Mr. Fox character a joy to witness.

2. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Peak Wes Anderson 2.0 style. A film which showed how his style combined with a location can work wonders.

3. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

The first introduction to the contemporary Wes Anderson style is a charming, witty film.

4. The Isle of Dogs (2018)

Playful, fun and in a way foreshadows the chaos that the pandemic introduced in 2020.

5. The Darjeeling Limited (2012)

This film shows how actual foreign locations can work within the framework of Wes Anderson’s cinema. The bright colours of India were always going to pop but here they sing. High profile cameos are now expected in Wes Anderson’s films and this film contains one such cameo of Irrfan Khan.

6. Rushmore (1998)

7. Bottle Rocket (1996)

8. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

9. The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

10. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

11. Asteroid City (2023)

12. The French Dispatch (2021)

Essential reading

Two Adam Nayman articles perfectly describe the recent Wes Anderson cinema.

Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme Embraces the Modest Pleasures | The New Republic

Welcome Back to Wes World - The Ringer

The Films of Oliver Laxe

Spotlight on Oliver Laxe’s films:

You All Are Captains (2010)

Mimosas (2016)

Fire Will Come (2019)

Sirat (2025)

Plus, additional note on Ben Rivers’ The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (2015)

I am happy to say that I was there from the start to witness Oliver Laxe’s film trajectory. His debut feature, You All Are Captains, was part of our film festival’s Mavericks program, a spotlight to showcase new promising directors. Safe to say, our festival got Laxe’s selection right. He indeed has gone to great acclaim since his debut feature.

There are a few common elements/themes that emerge from all four features, including Ben River’s The Sky Trembles:

Landscape as character: Landscape plays a big part in all of Laxe’s films with the rugged terrain of Morocco in 3 of his features plus Ben Rivers’ The Sky Trembles. The exception of a Moroccan location is Laxe’s Fire Will Come but in that film, the landscape of Spain is front and centre with its depiction of the Galician forests.

Spiritual and Mysticism: Spiritualism and mysticism permeate in Oliver Laxe’s films with characters undertaking life-changing journeys and grappling with themes of guilt, death, redemption.

Immersive and contemplative cinema: Laxe’s films offer an immersive experience with the thoughtful combination of camera angles and usage of music. The shots aren’t rushed, thereby allowing one to soak in the atmosphere while contemplating on the character’s fate and choices.

You All Are Captains (2010)

Oliver Laxe’s impressive award winning black and white film demonstrates that even an improvised film needs a structure to make the work engaging. The film's first 20 minutes feature a filmmaker teaching school kids how to use a camera. The filmmaker has no script or goal in mind and a result, frustrates his students who are puzzled by the filmmaker's motives. After the kids complain, the filmmaker is replaced with another director who gives a structure thereby letting the film's brilliance shine through. The ending of the film in color puts the whole work into perspective including the first 20 minutes. Laxe brilliantly announced himself with this bold assured debut.

The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (2015, Ben Rivers)

This film’s long title, multi-layered structure and core story draws inspiration from Paul Bowles’ writing. The structure of the film is a nod to what Bowles managed in ‘A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard’ where Bowles found a common thread to link 4 completely different stories together. In The Sky Trembles, Ben Rivers has constructed a film which links together multiple works including a short story, a short film, some documentary footage and an art installation. All these works are seamlessly stitched together in a linear manner.

Rivers has managed this by alternating one aspect of Paul Bowles’ short story ‘A Distant Episode’. In the short story, the main character is a professor. In the film, the main character is a film director. This change allows Ben Rivers to find a common thread to link the different elements. This is because at the start of The Sky Trembles, we see the filmmaker Oliver Laxe scouting for locations in Morocco and attempting to complete a gruelling film shoot. The scenes we see are actual footage from Laxe's second feature Mimosas. And then at some point in The Sky Trembles, Oliver Laxe stops shooting his film and steps into Paul Bowles story. What then follows is a series of remarkable events.

Mimosas (2016)

The Mimosas appetizer in Ben Rivers’ The Sky Trembles was promising which is why it is an absolute pleasure to discover that Laxe’s second feature Mimosas delivers a scrumptious cinematic buffet. In fact, Mimosas contains the full depiction of Laxe’s cinematic style (landscape, mysticism, contemplation) and one can draw a direct line from Mimosas to Sirat.

Sirat (2025)

Mimosas got noticed on the film festival circuit but you would have been hard pressed to find it on any end of the year list or part of general film conversation. The same cannot be said of Sirat, which has featured prominently in best of the year lists. The success of Sirat shows how one can retool their film for a wider audience. The Mimosas to Sirat repackaging echoes that of Albert Serra who took the core of his earlier study of diplomats and powerful people and repurposed it in a more contemporary setting for Pacification which ended up being his most accessible and widely distributed film. In a similar manner, Laxe has taken the essence and core of Mimosas and repurposed it in Sirat.

Mimosas features a spiritual journey where death hovers over it characters, both literally and metaphorically. Death is also omnipresent in Sirat but Laxe trades away the silence in Mimosas for techno music (EDM, rave music). The subtle spirituality of Mimosas gives way to the on the nose scenarios of Sirat’s final third act. Both Mimosas and Sirat end in a similar manner, where characters trade up their traveling method. In Mimosas, the foot and horse journey gives way to cars in the end, while in Sirat the cars/vans give way to train. The finale of each film shows that the characters are defeated by the Moroccan landscape and their mode of transportation is a respite, away from the landscape which they may not have conquered physically but certainly scaled in a spiritual manner. You can be sure that the characters in both these films emerge from the landscape transformed.

Fire Will Come (2019)

There is a transformation in Fire Will Come and the film is a trial by fire for its main character, Amador (Amador Arias), who is released from jail for suspected arson and returns home to live with his mother. His crimes are not forgiven and the locals are still suspicious of him. Therefore, it isn’t surprising that when a fire breaks out, they suspect him. However, Amador is determined to cleanse his soul and fight his inner demons.

The film’s rural setting and suspicious neighbours reminds of Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s riveting film The Beasts (2022). However, the differing approaches of both films show overall intent of the director. The Beasts shows what unfolds when simmering inner frustrations are allowed to erupt leading to violence. In Fire Will Come, Amador is suffering as well but his struggle is internalized. The fire in the film is also symbolic of his attempt at burning away his past and being reborn, in a similar manner to how fires help shape a forest and allow it to grow back healthier.

Ranking Oliver Laxe’s films in order of preference:

1. Mimosas (2016)

The best of all four of Oliver Laxe’s films and one that highlights his auteur style the best.

2. Sirat (2025)

The most successful of Laxe’s films to date and is a case study of how to take spiritual themes of a more artistic film such as Mimosas and repurpose for a more accessible film.

3. Fire Will Come (2019)

4. You All Are Captains (2010)

The Films of José Giovanni

Previously, I knew José Giovanni as the writer of Jacques Becker’s stellar prison break film, Le Trou, which I first saw more than two decades ago. The detailed aspects of the day-to-day prison life shown in Le Trou were unlike anything I had seen in a film. At the time, I wasn’t aware that the film was based on Giovanni’s novel of his real-life experience in prison. The realistic scenes portrayed in the film made sense.

Recently, I found out that that José Giovanni directed many films, some of which have gotten a proper re-release. This spotlight is based on these 5 viewed films:

Birds of Prey (1968)

Last Known Address (1970)

Hit Man (La Scoumoune, 1972)

Two Men in Town (1973)

Boomerang (1976)

The films hold up nicely across 5-6 decades and are superior to majority of contemporary films. A few common elements emerge across the films:

• Gritty Realistic storytelling: the films have a lived in experience and come from a place of experience and not scripted fiction. There is more emphasis on day-to-day details, procedures, routines over dramatic action sequences.
• Codes of honour: characters, on either side of the law, follow a code of honour and respect those that do even if they are an opponent. Friendships are often tested by betrayal, violence, and passage of time.
• Confinement and escape: Le Trou was about an actual prison escape and Giovanni has used that aspect to depict other characters in prisons, wanting to escape or adjusting to life after prison. Giovanni’s films also highlight that once a character leaves a physical prison, they struggle for freedom psychologically.
• Fatalism and moral ambiguity: there is an inevitability to events that unfold around characters and that is due to how society perceives people, especially those who have served time. The films show characters who strive for dignity in society that refuses to give them a second chance.

Birds of Prey – Latin American coup

Coups are long associated with Latin American history and covered amply in books, films. While each coup is different based on the Latin American country, a few commonalities emerge. Someone within the country is tired of the existing ruler (or dictator) and wants to be in power and they hire outsiders to mount an assassination. Then there are the shadow groups in the background who are really running the country, fund the assassination and decide who they want in power. All of these aspects are covered nicely in José Giovanni’s Birds of Prey, with the variation that the assassin is a lone wolf (played by Lino Ventura) which gives the film a spaghetti western feel: outsider vs locals. Birds of Prey is an engrossing film that mixes elements of political thriller, spaghetti western action with some romance thrown in the mix. Like all of José Giovanni’s films, this one feels like it is coming from a place of personal experience.

Last Known Address – in search for justice

Giovanni’s films depict society with unflinching brutal honest reality. That is true in Last Known Address which shows the price one has to pay for honesty and justice. The film is a thriller where two police officers try to find a witness to bring down a criminal. The searching, moving from one location to another, highlights the difficult job of piecing together clues to find someone. The film also shows the brutal truth about the price for justice and the role of law in protecting innocent people. Such honest depictions are rarely found in Hollywood films which often romanticize similar themes to often arrive a tidy conclusion. Giovanni’s film only offers up cold brutal truth.

Hit Man – friendship, rival gangs, war time efforts

With a title like Hit Man, one expects an assassin for hire film. Yet, José Giovanni’s film is much more than that. It covers an entire world of rival gangs, prison rules, war time efforts and enduring friendship over the decades. In terms of scope, the closest are the films of Kinji Fukasaku which often depicted how gangs, war and society mixed together. Giovanni’s film is further enriched by the presence of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Michel Constantin.

Two Men in Town – two heavyweight French actors, redemption and Newton’s third law

Two Men in Town is a brilliant story about morality, redemption, rehabilitation, reintegration in society and consequences. The film stars Jean Gabin as a social worker (Germain) who ensures that prisoners and criminals get a second chance in society. Germain puts his word on the line for Gino (Alain Delon) and is convinced that Gino will never go back to jail. Yet, what Germain doesn’t count on is the arrival of a police officer who is convinced that criminals never change. There isn’t a film like Two Men in Town out there and it showcases the unique perspective that Giovanni brought to his films in covering topics that other writers, directors never touched.

Boomerang – continues dialogue with Two Men in Town

Boomerang continues with themes of justice and morality that Two Men in Town ended with. In the case of this film, Alain Delon players a father whose teenage son is accused of murdering a cop. The film, in conjunction with Two Men in Town, shows that killing a cop carries grave consequence vs killing another person in society and explores how the law is treated differently for police vs others. Giovanni again covers topics and perspective that other directors don’t highlight.

Conclusion

When it comes to French cinema, José Giovanni’s isn’t as well known as that of Jacques Becker or other action/noir directors. The 1993 revelation that Giovanni had links with Nazi occupiers of France during WWII likely also played a part in his works being distanced. However, the recent re-release of his films by Kino Lorber ensures that at least his films will get another chance to be viewed and not be lost. The themes of guilt, moral ambiguity and redemption in his films hint at aspects that preoccupied him and his depiction of such themes have implications in our contemporary world.

Bi Gan's Cinema

Spotlight on Bi Gan

Kaili Blues (2015)

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018)

Resurrection (2025)

Very few directors can make their mark in international cinema with just a handful of films. In Bi Gan’s case, he was able to establish himself after just 2 features. Bi Gan got plenty of film festival love with his debut feature Kaili Blues but it was Long Day’s Journey Into Night that led to analysis of his technical style and visual wizardry. Resurrection has just increased those discussion and analysis points. Safe to say, the next Bi Gan film will have a much higher anticipation level.

The Bi Gan Long take

Any discussion about Bi Gan’s cinema will invariably feature his usage of long takes. Kaili Blues has a virtuoso 41-minute handheld sequence, Long Day’s Journey Into Night has a 50+ minute 3D shot and Resurrection has a 30-minute-long sequence. This has become his cinematic signature and his usage is different in each film. In Kaili Blues, the long take provides a thrilling immersive technical wonder while the long take in Long Day’s Journey provides an emotional mesmerizing experience. Resurrection combines both sentiments as the long starts off as a technical flourish before depicting passage of time, a melancholic aspect that is applicable to both the characters and to the overall film arc.

In Dennis Lim’s excellent interview, Bi Gan explains his usage of long take in all 3 films:

The long take has become a signature of yours. Would you say it is used to different effect in each of your films? 

I was not planning to use a long take in this movie. But it’s like an alcoholic who says they’re going to quit drinking. When things become difficult, you fall back on what you know. When we started on the doomsday chapter, we didn’t have many resources left, so I decided to go back to my familiar way of shooting with long takes.

In Kaili Blues, what I wanted was to convey the perception of time, not in a scientific way, but as normal people perceive it. For Long Day’s Journey, I used the long take to portray memory, which has a spatial aspect to it—going downward into memory. For this chapter about doomsday in Resurrection, I wanted to film from night through to the next morning. But we didn’t have the resources, so we used the time-lapse technique. For Kaili Blues and Long Day’s Journey, I had more time to build up the atmosphere in the long takes. Here it’s only 30 minutes long, so I tried other devices, like moving into a character’s point of view, and color coding. – Dennis Lim, Film Comment, Oct 2025

Memory, Time and Space

Bi Gan’s first two films, Kaili Blues and Long Day’s Journey Into Night, blended both past and present in depicting its events. Resurrection adds an imagined future to proceedings and thereby completes a time loop where the past and future are linked. Memories have always played a part in Bi Gan’s films but they take on a much more central role in Resurrection as the film imagines a future where dreaming no long exists and therefore, memories become a vital currency.

The budget and production quality has increased with each film but that has been inversely proportional to the story, meaning the story and narrative structure has decreased with each film. Kaili Blues is the closest to an actual story framework (even though it meshes past-present) while Long Day’s Journey Into Night has a much more fluid narrative framework and Resurrection has different chapters to outline events with a thread connecting all the chapters. Of course, it goes without saying that Bi Gan’s films are not traditional story driven films. His films are powered by the combination of stories with technical flourishes that result in an immersive cinematic experience.

Ranking Bi Gan’s films by cinematic experience

I have been fortunate to have seen all 3 films in an actual cinema. So I can rank them based on actual cinematic experience.

1. Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018)

A hypnotic mesmerizing experience enhanced by the switch from 2D to 3D. This was also the first film that I have seen which required a switch from 2D to 3D, cleverly timed with a character putting on 3D glasses in the film. Once the character puts on his 3D glasses, that was a cue for the audience to put on their own 3D glasses.

2. Kaili Blues (2015)

The technical wonder of the 41-minute unbroken sequence was a joy to witness. Going into the film, I was aware of this sequence but it was impactful to view different ways to depict a sequence without cutting.

3. Resurrection (2025)

Resurrection, Courtesy Janus Films

Lovely to see a journey through cinema, especially the inclusion of silent cinema sequence which paid homage to German expressionist cinema. The final sequence of a changing China reminded me of Jia Zhang-ke’s cinema, especially Still Life (2006).

Other Reading

1. Dennis Lim, Film Comment

2. Shelly Kraicer on Kaili Blues, Cinema Scope

3. Nick Schager on Kaili Blues, Variety

The Films of Kleber Mendonça Filho

Spotlight on the films of Kleber Mendonça Filho

Neighboring Sounds (O som ao redor) (2012)

Aquarius (2016)

Bacurau (2019, Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles)

Pictures of Ghosts (2023)

The Secret Agent (2025)

It is an enriching experience to view a director’s collected works and understand their cinematic style. In the case of Kleber Mendonça, I was fortunate to view his first feature film Neighboring Sounds in a cinema and watch all subsequent films in order. I was a fan of the social commentary in that first film but there was a lingering sense of dread the film evoked. I wasn’t able to pin down that sense of dread and what style it was evoking. Mendonça’s second film Aquarius confirmed what that underlying layer was. Just to hammer home the point, Kleber Mendonça’s third film Bacurau spelled things out. Mendonça was a fan of genre films and layered his works with reworkings of horror, thriller elements. This sense of genre has a delicious presence in his recent film The Secret Agent, a film about real and imagined monsters. In The Secret Agent, the real monsters hide in the shadow but in a very creative homage to genre films of old, a terror emerges from the shadow to cause havoc on innocent people. This terror has political implications but in the newspaper columns, radio programs and people’s imagination, the fear of this terror takes hold displaying the real monsters. The genre homage is played upon by the film’s Indian release poster:

Once Upon a time in Recife

Recife forms a core unifying thread in Kleber Mendonça’s cinema as the director’s birth city is featured prominently in 4 of his 5 features to date and multiple short films. The exception is Bacurau but that film is shot in the state of Pernambuco, a state whose capital is Recife. Via these 5 features, Recife and the state of Pernambuco showcase monsters and terrors that haunt both urban and rural settings.

In Neighbouring Sounds, the film shows the fear that grips residents across the poverty divide when urban anxieties are heightened by outsiders, perhaps those arriving from rural parts or other urban centers. Aquarius shows the world of rapid development where the past is always in danger of being demolished for a shiny new future. In this case, the villains are land developers who are constantly looking for new avenues to increase their profit. Bacurau takes the fight for land, water and survival to extremes where the rich wealthy foreigners hunt the locals for fun. Interestingly, contemporary events around the world mean Bacurau feels an allegory of our current times. Pictures of Ghosts is the only documentary out of these 5 films and showcases a past where cinema played a vital part in people’s weekly social and cultural outings. The Secret Agent goes back to Brazil’s political past but this film’s look and feel would not have been possible without Pictures of Ghosts. Indeed, some frames of The Secret Agent look like those archived footage shown in Pictures of Ghosts.

Ranking of these 5 Kleber Mendonça Filho films:

1. Neighboring Sounds (2012)

Aided by a rich sound design & visuals, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s debut feature film ensures an immersive cinematic experience. A viewer gets a ringside seat in one of Recife’s neighbourhoods to witness the daily activities of the residents, including their morning and nightly routines. Depicting the everyday reality would have been good enough, but Kleber Mendonça Filho enhances the experience by adding layers of memories and nightmares with a few smart cuts. As a result, the multi-layered film contains a subtle sense of dread but in a much subtler note than Michael Haneke's Caché. This means that even when viewers witness harmless events in and around an apartment complex, there is a sense that something sinister is going to happen. The viewer can't be passive and is instead forced to examine each frame and its accompanying sound to know what the characters are up to.

2. The Secret Agent (2025)

The Secret Agent is easily the most accessible and cohesive of all Kleber Mendonça’s features to date. The smart decision to incorporate present times while depicting the past allows one to see the consequences of events over the course of a few decades. The film also shows how cinemas, once a vital part of society, become different spaces to heal people.

3. Bacurau (2019, Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles)

In the near future, the small, isolated town of Bacurau becomes a setting for an epic battle for the ages. The inhabitants of the town are already struggling with lack of water and feel they are forgotten, a fact confirmed when they discover that their town is erased from the internet. The arrival of a few strangers jolts them into a heightened state of alert and soon they find themselves under attack from an international group of killers led by the experienced killer Micheal (Udo Kier). The killers are expecting easy prey but they aren’t aware of the town’s history or the residents’ usage of psychotropic drugs. The locals, led by Domingas (the legendary Sônia Braga), dig in and prepare for a bloody carnage.

Winner of a Jury Prize at Cannes, Bacurau is a scrumptious cocktail of an end of the world battle dipped in blood-soaked Spaghetti Westerns and garnished with political and sci-fi elements. This smart multi-layered political allegory is dressed in an exciting range of genres with references to Sergio Leone and John Carpenter’s films.

4. Aquarius (2016)

Even though the film is localized to a Brazilian apartment building, the events echo our current world of rapid development where the past is always in danger of being demolished for a shiny new future. In a way, the core message of this film has taken on more urgency in the decade since this film was released as fight for land has only intensified.

5. Pictures of Ghosts (2023)

A beautiful ode to Recife and cinemas of the past. The film shows how Recife has changed over the decades and once a city that teemed with cinemas now only has a few such operational cinemas. Many are abandoned or redone into other spaces. This is a scenario that is taking place across countless other cities across the world over the last few decades.

György Fehér's Twilight

Twilight (Szürkület, 1990, György Fehér)

Courtesy: Arbelos Films

György Fehér's Twilight looks and feels like Béla Tarr's Damnation. Twilight's black and white visuals, bleak surroundings, creative & measured camera movements, pace of proceedings, rain and the presence of dogs recalls Tarr's extraordinary film. This visual similarity is fascinating especially since the source material for Twilight is the 1958 feature It Happened in Broad Daylight written by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. This indicates that a visual framework can be reproduced even though the source material is different.

Courtesy: Arbelos Films

Twilight was released two years after Béla Tarr's Damnation(1988) which makes it easy to conclude that Tarr's visual style influenced György Fehér. However, these words by László Nemes give pause:

György Fehér, who was Béla Tarr’s mentor. Even though he’s at the heart of Béla Tarr’s work — and had a major influence on Bela’s stylistic shift in the ’80s — he has always remained in the shadows. He made two films, Szürkület and Szenvedély. They are incredible films, masterpieces. -- Filmmaker Magazine, Shevaun Mizrahi

Twilight, Courtesy Arbelos Films

Like the investigation at the heart of Twilight, it feels like the case of who influenced whom must be investigated further.

The Films of Nina Menkes

Spotlight on Nina Menkes

A long overdue spotlight on Nina Menkes focuses on 5 of her 6 directed features to date plus her second short film.

The Great Sadness of Zohara (1983, 38 min short)

Magdalena Viraga (1986)

Queen of Diamonds (1990)

The Bloody Child (1996)

Phantom Love (2007)

Dissolution (2010)

Note: This spotlight is missing her recent feature Brainwashed (2022), which would have completed 6/6 of her feature films directed to date (this doesn’t include Massacre, her co-directed 2005 doc).

The word ‘Visionary’ is so often used to describe the works of a director that it feels overused and misrepresented. However, this word is apt in the case of Nina Menkes as her distinctive style is uncompromising and stands apart from her contemporaries. So far, she has only directed 6 feature films over the span of 36 years. That works out to an average of 1 film per 6 years. Although, there is a significant gap of 12 years between Dissolution and Brainwashed. Each film is unique on its own, but some common threads/elements emerge over these 6 films in this spotlight.

Isolation, Alienation and a Female Perspective

Cinema is full of examples of isolated and alienated male characters who are then driven to violence or self-destruction as a means of coping with their situation. Nina Menkes offers a differing perspective by focusing on isolated female characters. In her films, the female characters are observed as they navigate their challenging environments and try to cope with their lives. The films are stripped of any overdramatic moments or violence but instead layered with dreams (such as Phantom Love), symbolism (Phantom Love, Queen of Diamonds, Magdalena Viraga) which allows an insight into the character’s emotional and mental state. Interestingly, the only film from these 6 to feature an outright male lead (Dissolution) does feature a violent act but that is kept off screen with the film instead focusing on the daily boredom, isolation of the male character.

Experimental Narrative, Surrealism, Fantasy

Nina Menkes’ films are non-linear and don’t follow regular conventions of a narrative structure. One won’t find a three-act structure in any of these films. In addition, some of the films use dreams and symbolism to blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy which helps give an insight into the character’s mental state.

The Bloody Child is a perfect example to contrast her style with that of other directors. The film is based on a real-life event where a young US Marine killed his wife after his return from the Gulf War. Many films have dealt with the violent aftermath of returning soldiers, yet Menkes doesn’t present events in a straightforward narrative. Instead, the film uses repeated scenes which emphasize the constant abuse of power and violence that is drilled into the soldiers in their day-to-day operations, which seeps into their core.

Collaboration with Tinka Menkes

A notable aspect of Menkes’s filmmaking is her immensely creative collaboration with her sister, Tinka Menkes. Tinka acted in 5 of Nina’s films: A Soft Warrior (Nina’s debut short), The Great Sadness of Zohara, Magdalena Viraga, Queen of Diamonds, The Bloody Child. In addition, the two sisters co-edited Queen of Diamonds and The Bloody Child.

Ranking the films of Nina Menkes in order of preference:

1. Phantom Love (2007)

Phantom Love, Courtesy Arbelos Films

A hypnotic mesmerizing film that echoes shades of Béla Tarr and David Lynch yet is clearly Menkes' distinct style. The usage of black and white works perfectly as it helps give the illusion of events taking place in the same location. Yet, it is still very hard to hide the distinctive look of Rishikesh (India). The film contains many memorable images, one of them being snakes in the hallway.

2. Magdalena Viraga (1986)

Nina’s debut feature film helps set the tone for her style: non-linear structure, symbolism, minimal dialogue, use of repeated scenes to emphasize mental state of characters.

3. Queen of Diamonds (1990)

Queen of Diamonds, Courtesy Arbelos Films

Las Vegas has never looked so different in a film! Majority of the films set in Vegas glamorize the gambling and constant lights of the city, yet Nina & Tinka Menkes showcase the dullness and repetitive aspect of being a card dealer. Plus, the film contains many stellar images such as that of the burning palm tree.

4. Dissolution (2010)

Loosely based on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Dissolution is the first of Nina Menkes’ films to feature a male lead. Yet her style of using repeated images highlights the isolation of the male character leading to his violent act.

5. The Great Sadness of Zohara (1983)

The film starts and ends in Jerusalem with a trip to North Africa in the middle. It is hard to believe that this was Nina Menken’s student film made on a shoe-string budget. The North African sequences reminded me of Oliver Laxe’s North African set films such as You All Are Captains (2010), Mimosas (2016) even though Menkes shot her film almost three decades before Laxe made his debut.

6. The Bloody Child (1996)

The Bloody Child, Courtesy Arbelos Films

The non-linear structure made me recall the experience of Harun Farocki’s “Images of War” exhibition (2011-12). In Farocki’s installation, a loop repeated images of a simulated war and it didn’t matter at which point one started to see the film as one could get the intent behind the simulation. Similarly, Menkes’ film showcases repeated images and one can get the sense of proceedings based on just a few sequences.