Neptune Frost
Anisia Uzeyman & Saul Williams Rwanda / USA 2021 105’ (cert. 15)
English, French, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi with English subtitles | Digital video
Part of Baltic Cinema’s Sources strand, screening as a response to Harold Offeh’s exhibition Mothership 2.0.
Anisia Uzeyman and Saul Williams’ mind-bendingly inventive film defies easy classification. Part-musical, part-sci fi, part-political polemic, Neptune Frost is an electrifying experience which fuses the lo-fi and the high-camp, the grungily analogue and the open-sourced digital.
A vast Rwandan coltan mine and Burundian village-turned-techno-scrapheap hacker encampment set the scene for this non-conforming musical adventure. An electrifying connection between intersex runaway Neptune (Elvis Ngabo and Cheryl Isheja) and coltan miner Matalusa (Kaya Free) create a virtual offspring with the potential to ignite a revolution. The soundtrack, composed by Williams, is our emotional and spiritual guide through overlapping analogue and digital universes, embracing his defiantly experimental, activist and intersectional position.
Blending afro-futuristic and glitch aesthetics, the creative team’s dynamic vision includes art direction from polymath Cedric Mizero (fashion designer, artist, photographer) and producer backing from Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton and In the Heights. Made with an entirely Rwandan and Burundian cast and crew, Neptune Frost presents an intoxicatingly original way to explore economic inequality specific to this mining region of Africa, and the role of technology as both oppressor and liberator.
‘Hauntingly beautiful’ — Variety
‘The future of Black film. Pure cinematic power.’ — The Hollywood Reporter
Level 1 Cinema
Doors open 18:30; Film starts 18:45. Baltic Kitchen is open until 18:30 for drinks, which you are welcome to take up to the cinema.
