In an uncertain world, cinema has chosen to look inwards. Perhaps there’s a dose of narcissism there. But so many of this year’s films have been propelled by natural, vulnerable impulses: to return home, to think back on youth, to reconsider art’s purpose. They’re present in James Gray’s autobiographical Armageddon Time, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s self-reflective Bardo, the dark comedy The Banshees of Inisherin, and Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s White Noise. Even the biggest blockbusters, Top Gun: Maverick and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, seem weighted with self-reflection. My own favourite 15 films, all released in the UK over the past year, have each themselves proven that the medium still has the power to heal the soul.
15. Happening
Audrey Diwan’s Happening tore into cinemas this April on the back of an oracle’s cry. The film follows Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei), a student...
15. Happening
Audrey Diwan’s Happening tore into cinemas this April on the back of an oracle’s cry. The film follows Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei), a student...
- 12/5/2022
- by Clarisse Loughrey
- The Independent - Film
Transgressive revolutionaries in a dazzlingly inventive drama from Anisia Uzeyman and musician Saul Williams, set in an alternate Burundi
Black Panther 2 is imminent, but in many ways the extraordinary Neptune Frost is the real Afrofuturist deal: a transgressive socialist Wakanda with an exoskeleton of punk geopolitics bolted on. As well as a denunciation of the western techno-centric order, it’s a musical lesson in conscious collaboration between the developed and developing world that Hollywood could learn from – instead of just piggybacking on African aesthetics. Filmed in Rwanda but set in Burundi, the story was developed by US musician Saul Williams – drawing on material from his recent albums – and his Rwandan wife Anisia Uzeyman; they share the directorial credit.
A near-future alt.Burundi gets its own Ziggy Stardust: Neptune (Elvis Ngabo), a gaunt outcast who likes wearing high heels and wanders the countryside in search of “fourth dimensional libations”. Shepherded...
Black Panther 2 is imminent, but in many ways the extraordinary Neptune Frost is the real Afrofuturist deal: a transgressive socialist Wakanda with an exoskeleton of punk geopolitics bolted on. As well as a denunciation of the western techno-centric order, it’s a musical lesson in conscious collaboration between the developed and developing world that Hollywood could learn from – instead of just piggybacking on African aesthetics. Filmed in Rwanda but set in Burundi, the story was developed by US musician Saul Williams – drawing on material from his recent albums – and his Rwandan wife Anisia Uzeyman; they share the directorial credit.
A near-future alt.Burundi gets its own Ziggy Stardust: Neptune (Elvis Ngabo), a gaunt outcast who likes wearing high heels and wanders the countryside in search of “fourth dimensional libations”. Shepherded...
- 10/31/2022
- by Phil Hoad
- The Guardian - Film News
The Afrofuturist musical is exec produced by Lin-Mauel Miranda.
UK distributor Anti-Worlds has acquired UK and Ireland rights to Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s Afrofuturist musical Neptune Frost from Kino Lorber. The film premiered in Cannes’ Directors Fortnight in 2021 and was nominated for the Queer Palm award.
Set in a Rwandan village made of computer parts, the sci-fi musical follows an intersex African hacker and a coltan miner who, along with their love child, trigger a revolution against the authoritarian regime. The cast is made up of newcomers Elvis Ngabo, Cheryl Isheja and Kaya Free.
The film will be...
UK distributor Anti-Worlds has acquired UK and Ireland rights to Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s Afrofuturist musical Neptune Frost from Kino Lorber. The film premiered in Cannes’ Directors Fortnight in 2021 and was nominated for the Queer Palm award.
Set in a Rwandan village made of computer parts, the sci-fi musical follows an intersex African hacker and a coltan miner who, along with their love child, trigger a revolution against the authoritarian regime. The cast is made up of newcomers Elvis Ngabo, Cheryl Isheja and Kaya Free.
The film will be...
- 8/3/2022
- by Ellie Calnan
- ScreenDaily
One of the first songs we hear in Neptune Frost, Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s perceptive and unusual take on a musical, is a work song. It’s during an early scene set among a group of miners who are busy harvesting the raw materials that will make the technologies of other people from other countries possible. Soon, one of those miners dies — rather, he is killed using the butt of an overseer’s gun. That’s when the mourning starts, particularly from the dead man’s brother Matalusa...
- 6/15/2022
- by K. Austin Collins
- Rollingstone.com
This review of “Neptune Frost” was first published on Jun 2, 2022, before it opened in New York City.
Behold one of the most extraordinarily original cinema experiences of the year: Pulsing with a revolutionary heart, “Neptune Frost,” from co-directors Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman (credited on screen as Swan), indicts the advent of technological advancements that thrive on ignoring the people whose suffering and displacement make those advancements possible.
Grounded on ancestral wisdom while innovative in its imagery, this Afrofuturistic musical flips off neocolonialism, manifested as labor exploitation and the extraction of resources to supply the world with digital communication; miners of coltan, a metal used in the creation of modern technology, are expendable for the capitalist powers of the world.
In this temporally undefined future, Burundi, an East African nation, exists under the rule of the Authority, a tyrannical government that suppresses student protests and manipulates the media to maintain...
Behold one of the most extraordinarily original cinema experiences of the year: Pulsing with a revolutionary heart, “Neptune Frost,” from co-directors Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman (credited on screen as Swan), indicts the advent of technological advancements that thrive on ignoring the people whose suffering and displacement make those advancements possible.
Grounded on ancestral wisdom while innovative in its imagery, this Afrofuturistic musical flips off neocolonialism, manifested as labor exploitation and the extraction of resources to supply the world with digital communication; miners of coltan, a metal used in the creation of modern technology, are expendable for the capitalist powers of the world.
In this temporally undefined future, Burundi, an East African nation, exists under the rule of the Authority, a tyrannical government that suppresses student protests and manipulates the media to maintain...
- 6/9/2022
- by Carlos Aguilar
- The Wrap
Indie distributors, grabbing a frame between Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World Dominion, are out with a handful of decently wide releases for the specialty space including Neon’s Cannes title Crimes of the Future (127 screes), IFC Midnight thriller Watcher (764) and Roadside Attractions’ WWI period piece Benediction (87). Sony Pictures Classics launches Phantom of the Open in four theaters in NY and LA.
Netflix is taking Hustle to 275 screens as the industry looks for signs that big streamers are warming to theatrical.
Yash Raj Films opens historical Bollywood epic Prithviraj in over 400 theaters as the steady flow of Indian fare remains a bulwark for U.S. cinemas.
The David Cronenberg written and directed dystopian sci-fi body-parts drama Crimes of the Future with Léa Seydoux, Viggo Mortensen and Kristen Stewart debuts fresh off a six-minute standing ovation in Cannes, As the human species adapts to a synthetic environment, bodies undergoes transformations and mutation.
Netflix is taking Hustle to 275 screens as the industry looks for signs that big streamers are warming to theatrical.
Yash Raj Films opens historical Bollywood epic Prithviraj in over 400 theaters as the steady flow of Indian fare remains a bulwark for U.S. cinemas.
The David Cronenberg written and directed dystopian sci-fi body-parts drama Crimes of the Future with Léa Seydoux, Viggo Mortensen and Kristen Stewart debuts fresh off a six-minute standing ovation in Cannes, As the human species adapts to a synthetic environment, bodies undergoes transformations and mutation.
- 6/3/2022
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
With his directorial debut, poet-musician-actor Saul Williams has no desire to hold back. Neptune Frost, a technology-focused musical set in Rwanda co-directed with Anisia Uzeyman, sees Williams put all of his previous artistic efforts into an unfocused, wholly singular work, one with splashy producers like Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ezra Miller. Following the intense, dream-induced connection of a coltan miner, Matalusa (Bertrand “Kaya Free” Ninteretse), and intersex, on-the-run hacker Neptune (both Cheryl Isheja and Elvis Ngabo), Neptune Frost has ideas to spare, pursuing all in the form an anti-capitalist, pro-connectivity movement.
Beginning as a Kickstarter project that raised nearly $200,000 from 1,500 backers, the film wants to galvanize and embrace its characters and viewers. It has an appetite for justice, communion, and change in the farthest-reaching of places. In this case that’s a makeshift village constructed by technological scraps, existing amidst a never-ending war. Matalusa, mourning the death of his brother at the mines,...
Beginning as a Kickstarter project that raised nearly $200,000 from 1,500 backers, the film wants to galvanize and embrace its characters and viewers. It has an appetite for justice, communion, and change in the farthest-reaching of places. In this case that’s a makeshift village constructed by technological scraps, existing amidst a never-ending war. Matalusa, mourning the death of his brother at the mines,...
- 9/29/2021
- by Michael Frank
- The Film Stage
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