Films that explore colonial impact are thankfully becoming less rare, but few have captured the theme through such an unnerving lens as Banzo.
The film opens with a man on a boat collapsing while staring up a mist-shrouded mountaintop on Principe. It is like some deep elemental force reached over and snuffed out his life. He is on a boat bearing visitors to a plantation run by Portuguese colonists and this mysterious but mildly terrifying moment seems to imply something about this place, and about what is happening on it, that has an uncanny component. Filmmaker Margarida Cardoso doesn’t let up from there, creating a deliberate drama about confronting the ills done by us and unto us in a soup of eerie atmosphere.
The narrative follows a young Portuguese doctor, Alfonso (Carloto Cotta) who arrives on the island of Principe in 1907, looking for a somewhat more settled life after a difficult time in the Congo. His arrival is supposed to help curb the “playacting” of certain slaves and, in particular, he is tasked with diagnosing and suggesting a course of action to combat a lethargy and malaise that has overtaken a group of Mozambicans new to the plantation. As Alfonso observes them, his understanding and empathy allow him to cultivate the beginnings of a similar malaise himself – one that sees the soul shut down in the face of indentured servitude and dislocation from their homeland.
The stasis of this malady – referred to by the eponymous Kongo or Kimbundo word which describes a deep depression – becomes a recurring feature in many areas. From the measured and unobtrusive cinematography within which the performers also rein in their movement, to the inability or disinclination of the powerful to genuinely help or even act. While the Banzo manifests itself in a specific, physical way in the slaves, it is something that bleeds from the setting and the scenario. At one point, a character rallies against the insinuation that the island is cursed, despite the visuals constantly reminding us of the landscapes’ encroaching presence. Instead, he points out that it is people who are cursed.
Cardoso’s filmmaking feels as though it has various touchstones in the contemporary arthouse cinema world, from the tone of Apichatpong Weerasthekul’s to the milieu of something like Lucretia Martel’s Zama or Tabu, made by the director’s countryman, Miguel Gomes. However, despite these similarities – or perhaps even influences – being apparent, Cardoso has managed to manipulate them into a singular whole. Banzo is a film with very much its own personality, and it adheres to it unwaveringly. While there are multiple strands of plot that nudge their way into focus throughout, with varying success, the overarching feel is consistent and irresistible. As the characters themselves wrestle with their own exposure to this malady, so the audience are dragged into the same miasma of form and atmosphere.
This is evidently aided by the exceptional cinematography of Leandro Ferrao. Working with the sumptuous vistas of Sao Tome and Principe, he already has a leg up to begin with by his compositions are on another level. They are not just infused by the same unease that permeates the rest of the film, but enhance and elevate it. Ferrao’s eye for a wide shot in particular – those that seem to almost be tableaux, playing with the ideas also explored trough the staged photographs that are taken throughout the film by Alphonse (Hoji Fortuna). Ferrao manages to transfer a painterly eye to screen, enveloping the action within the marvel of the surroundings in such a way as to contaminate the beautiful and spectacular with an undeniable sense of trespass. Against place, against people.
Similar can be said about Rutger Zuvdervelt’s understated by impeccable score that heightens the tension and strangeness without ever tipping too far into horror. Perhaps subtly is really the key ingredient to Banzo, a film it which it might feel on the surface as though little is happening, while fathoms of psychological distance are covered. In this film, as in life, innocuous comments, or moments of passive inaction, can have deep and dire consequences that reverberate not just thought our lives but through history.
Director, screenplay: Margarida Cardoso
Cast: Carloto Cotta, Hoji Fortuna, João Pedro Bénard, Gonçalo Waddington, Sara Carinhas, Ruben Simões, Maria Do Céu Ribeiro, Matamba Joaquim, Romeu Runa, Cirila Bossuet
Producer: Filipa Reis
Cinematography: Leandro Ferrão
Editing: Pedro Filipe Marques
Music: Rutger Zuydervelt
Sound: Jaap W. Sijben
Production design: Artur Pinheiro
Costume: Silvia Grabowski
Production companies: Uma pedra no sapato (Portugal), Les films de l’après-midi, Damned films (both France), Baldr Film (Netherlands)
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Crystal Globe Competition)
In Portuguese, English
127 minutes
Read more of the team’s coverage of KVIFF 2024.
