José Cardoso

In 1960s South Africa, a close-knit community from Die Vlakte was forcibly and violently uprooted to make way for the Stellenbosch University as part of the Apartheid regime’s segregation measures. José Cardoso’s What the Soil Remembers recounts the traumatic effect displacement had on residents by bringing to the foreground a university that is still grappling with its racist legacy. To this day, the Die Vlakte community is fighting for justice and seeking reparations with little to no tangible solutions.

An enigmatic presence haunts the depths of the Amazon rainforest, where an indigenous Achuar teenager has disappeared. During the search for the young man, his family decides to consult with a Shaman, who, immersed in trance, reveals that the young man was taken by the devil, but that he has intervened by showing him the way back to his home. While waiting for his return, secrets of the rainforest and Amazonian visions of life after death are touched, vanishing the documentary filmmaker’s concepts of reality.

An enigmatic presence haunts the depths of the Amazon rainforest, where an indigenous Achuar teenager has disappeared. During the search for the young man, his family decides to consult with a Shaman, who, immersed in trance, reveals that the young man was taken by the devil, but that he has intervened by showing him the way back to his home. While waiting for his return, secrets of the rainforest and Amazonian visions of life after death are touched, vanishing the documentary filmmaker’s concepts of reality.

At a moment of great lucidity, or delirium maybe, Pancho has a sort of epiphany and affirms that he is being part of a movie.

At a moment of great lucidity, or delirium maybe, Pancho has a sort of epiphany and affirms that he is being part of a movie.

A musical illustration of nomadism, change, and human adaptation.

A musical illustration of nomadism, change, and human adaptation.

A musical illustration of nomadism, change, and human adaptation.

This is one of the first incursions of post-independence Mozambican production into feature-length fiction films, and it revisits the last stage of Portuguese colonialism. In their everyday life, two boys and a girl handle the arrogance of the Portuguese settlers as best as they can, until violence goes from words to actions. The wind of change blows from the North.

Documentary on Mozambican music, and the role it played in the country's rediscovering its national identity after centuries of colonial rule.