"Neptune Frost", the favorite of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival

“Neptune Frost”, by American Saul Williams and Frenchwoman of Rwandan origin Anisia Uzeyman, premiered at the Directors' Fortnight, at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. © Swan Films

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

5 mins

What is left at the end of a festival?

Award-winning films, the Palme d'Or, and then the crush.

“Neptune Frost”, directed by the American Saul Williams and the Frenchwoman of Rwandan origin Anisia Uzeyman, was the most curious, generous and innovative proposal of this Cannes Film Festival 2021. It is the story of a war that does not say without a name and of a love between an African hacker and a coltan miner on the run.

All in a completely new Afro-futuristic aesthetic.

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Selected out of competition at the Directors' Fortnight, this musical film shot in Burundi brings together song, dance and poetry.

And it turns out, in many ways, surprisingly close to the elements claimed by Julia Ducournau for her Palme d'or

Titane

 : the violence of the world, the questioning of identity and gender, an intersex aesthetic, the right to to be different and the quest for somewhere else.

But where Ducournau brings in the monstrosity and the monster,

Neptune Frost

relies on radically poetic and positive universes.

Anisia Uzeyman and Saul Williams

In this first film by Anisia Uzeyman, actress (she played in

Alain Gomis'

Tey

) and French director of Rwandan origin, and Saul Williams, American poet, actor, musician and activist, the story is told through etheric bodies interconnected by vibrations with other beings and intelligences.

Neptune Frost

makes extra-sensory perceptions hitherto unknown in cinema palpable, beyond human space-time.

“ 

I was born in my 23rd year, after 22 years of war,

 ” recounts at the beginning of the film a woman in glued braids, her face hidden behind a mask made of metallic threads.

We are invited to a funeral where the priest talks about the expectation of another life.

In the meantime, Tekno, a revolted coltan miner, must flee.

Throughout the film, death will watch him, because he understood: it is the coltan which transmits the energy circulating in the computers of the whole world.

For him, one more reason to no longer suffer the contempt of multinationals.

“Neptune Frost”, by American Saul Williams and Frenchwoman of Rwandan origin Anisia Uzeyman, premiered at the Directors' Fortnight, at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. © Swan Films

"The scavengers will not let us go"

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 grand as the mine around. This is where the wealth of some and the poverty of others is created. " 

The scavengers won't let go of us

 ," the song sings.   

It is indeed a question of the suffering caused by a workforce exploited by neocolonialism.

At the same time, an African hacker who is in the process of taking his independence, wonders about the victory of the binary world.

In an end-time atmosphere, we observe an eclipse of meaning 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, from another dimension.  

"No return possible"

Embarked on a boat, we move away from the shores.

Tekno, he puts on stilettos to enter into another identity.

“ 

No return possible,

 ” the song tells us.

We meet resuscitated ghosts and the clothes of Afro-futurism.

Everyday gestures are transformed into song, poetry, choreography.

The oscillation between several worlds is astonishingly beautiful.

Another main character is an avatar, made up of recycled screens, computers and other machines.

The motherboard is bleeding.

The power of the subconscious grows, wisdoms appear: " 

What birth has separated, love will reconnect."

 »« 

Draw your dream and dare to live it.

 "

“Neptune Frost”, by American Saul Williams and Frenchwoman of Rwandan origin Anisia Uzeyman, premiered at the Directors' Fortnight, at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. © Swan Films

A dream land born in the cinema

Welcome to the land of clairvoyance, where “the mountains have not awakened” and a person is called “Psychology”.

“ 

I was born from sound.

Sound preserves memory.

 "

Here, in this community in search of a better future (bye-bye “ 

Martyr Loser King

 ”), we break free from norms so that the various struggles against oppression can converge.

To tell about these fights against the Gafam (one song is entitled “ 

Go shit Mr. Google

 ”, another “ 

The algorithm is justice

 ”), patriarchal society or corrupt politicians, all narrative forms are admitted.

A dream country born in the cinema,

Neptun Frost

.

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