The stunning "Neptune Frost", from dream to revolt, African creativity on the march

"Neptune Frost", by American Saul Williams and Frenchwoman of Rwandan origin Anisia Uzeyman. © Swan Films

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

5 min

It is a country of dreams and revolt born in the cinema. This Wednesday, May 10, our favorite of the Cannes Film Festival 2021 is finally released in theaters. Neptune Frost is an unprecedented cinematic madness, defying, with creativity as its only weapon, the oppressive powers in Africa – from the postcolonial system to the Gafam. A dance and musical science fiction, directed by the American Saul Williams and the French of Rwandan origin Anisia Uzeyman.

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It is the story of a war that does not say without name and a love between Neptune, an African hacker fleeing sexual violence, and Matalusa, a young miner escaped from a coltan mine. All in a completely new Afrofuturist aesthetic. Shot in Rwanda and imagined in Burundi, this cinematographic musical brings together song, dance and poetry. An epic and dreamlike poem against the violence of the world.

Poetic and positive

With an Afrofuturistic and intersex aesthetic, Neptune Frost creates a space for reflection on identity and gender, the right to be different and the quest for somewhere else. We are witnessing the promise of a new world that opposes greed by beauty, cruelty by creativity, despair by the sketch of a future. In the midst of a world that is going badly, a radically poetic and positive universe emerges.

It is a breathtaking film, nourished as much by cyberpunk comics of the 1980s with their android RanXerox, as by 2046, Wong Kar Wai's extraordinary time machine, or the vertiginous fantasy of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris.

Until now, Rwandan-born French director Anisia Uzeyman had directed Dreamstates, but was best known as an actress in Alain Gomis' Tey. And American poet, actor, musician and activist Saul Williams co-wrote Marc Levin's Slam. Their first collaboration fused the strength of Williams' dream with the power of Uzeyman's Rwandan origins. Here, everything is sensations, emotions, allusions... The narrative advances through etheric bodies interconnected by vibrations with other beings and intelligences. Neptune Frost makes palpable extrasensory perceptions hitherto unknown in cinema, beyond the space-time of man. And thanks to the incredible creations of decorator and costume designer Cedric Mizero, the protagonists of Neptune Frost break down all barriers related to status, age, origin and gender, between human beings and technologies, between the traditional, the artisanal and the recycled.

"Neptune Frost", by American Saul Williams and Frenchwoman of Rwandan origin Anisia Uzeyman. © Swan Films

The Call of a Distant Planet

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I was born in my 23rd year, after 22 years of war " says at the beginning of the film a woman in glued braids, her face hidden behind a mask made of metal wires. Here we are invited to a funeral where the priest talks about waiting for another life. Meanwhile, Tekno, a coltan miner in revolt, must flee. Throughout the film, death will be waiting for him, because he has understood: it is coltan that transmits the energy circulating in computers around the world. For him, one more reason to no longer suffer the contempt of multinationals.

The coltan mine appears in the form of a choreography of gestures, punctuated by Burundian drums. With simple, but garish and colorful costumes, the scene becomes as grandiose as the mine around. This is where the wealth of some and the poverty of others are created. "The scavengers won't let us go," the song sings.

It is about the suffering caused by a workforce exploited by neocolonialism. At the same time, an African hacker who is taking his independence, wonders about the victory of the binary world. In an atmosphere of end times, we observe an eclipse of sense and a fire in the sky. On the head of the hacker character, who assumes his intersexual identity, turn fluorescent wheels. Like the call of a distant planet, another dimension.

"Neptune Frost", by American Saul Williams and Frenchwoman of Rwandan origin Anisia Uzeyman. © Swan Films

The land of clairvoyance

Embarked on a boat, we move away from the shores. Tekno, on the other hand, puts stilettos on to enter another identity. "No return possible," the song informs us. We meet resurrected ghosts and the clothes of Afro-futurism. The gestures of everyday life are transformed into song, poetry, choreography. The oscillation between several worlds is stunningly beautiful.

Another main character is an avatar, consisting of screens, computers and other recycled machines. The motherboard bleeds. The power of the subconscious grows, wisdom appears: "What birth has separated, love will reconnect." "Draw your dream and dare to live it.

Welcome to the land of clairvoyance, where "the mountains have not woken up" and a person is called "Psychology". "I was born from sound. Sound retains memory.

Here, in this community in search of a better future (bye-bye "Martyr Loser King"), we free ourselves from norms so that the different struggles against oppression can converge. To tell these battles against Gafam (one song is entitled "Va chier M. Google", another "L'algorithm est justice"), patriarchal society or corrupt politicians, all narrative forms are allowed. A freedom born of dreams. A dream country born in cinema, Neptune Frost.

Anisia Uzeyman and Saul Williams. © RFI

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