Zama

Lucrecia Martel forges one of cinema’s most mesmerizing accounts of colonial dystopia in her adaptation of Antonio di Benedetto’s classic of Argentinean literature. Zama is set in the late 18th century in a nameless far-flung Paraguayan locale follows magistrate Don Diego de Zama as he patiently awaits transfer to Buenos Aires. Languishing in a perpetual, liminal state, which induces a feverish tropical malady, Zama slips further and further from reality into madness with eerie nuance. A period piece, whose incisive critique of social and racial prejudice finds urgent, contemporary resonance, Zama is as exquisite as it is nightmarish.

(Do not miss Manuel Abromavich’s Años Luz, a captivating on-set portrait of Lucrecia Martel filming Zama, also screening at the festival.)