É noite na América

The cityscape of Brasília: a clogging of industry, automobiles and endless looping paved roads and highways. Occasionally a displaced wild animal, be it a monkey or an ant eater, scampers across a street. The unlucky will be casualties on the road, and the lucky will end up in a zoo. In her striking debut feature, filmmaker Ana Vaz weaves a mesmerising, poetic odyssey exploring the contamination of urban expansion on the natural world.

Shot on grainy 16mm, a format itself looming towards extinction, Vaz’s feature frames the landscape in the day-for-night wet blues of an endless twilight. Incorporating the eeriness of eco-horror with the ethnographic nature of a documentary, as the animals peering back at us from their cages and enclosures morph into a dizzying, poignant symbol of colonial displacement. A haunting, almost militarised score by the late legendary composer Guilherme Vaz propels us through this deeply textured and memorable meditation.

Vaz’s highly innovative threading of genres brings an exciting and fresh experimental flourish to the Harbour programme. Her short film Há terra! screened as part of IFFR's Bright Future programme in 2016, followed by the wondrous Apiyemiyekî? in the Ammondo Tiger Short Competition in 2020.

– Fiona Armour