O profeta

When Pastor Hélder’s faith begins to wane, he turns to witchcraft to reclaim it – gaining miraculous powers in return for sacrifice. Shot luminously in black and white, this austere debut unfolds with quiet intensity, revealing how doubt and darkness seeps into everyday life.

Helder has lost his faith in the Lord, which is troubling enough for any believer, but a catastrophe for a man of the cloth. Kind-hearted and deeply loved by the people of his parish in Manjacaze, a small town in southern Mozambique, he is left wondering where his belief went and how he might reclaim it. His search leads him to an unexpected realm: traditional witchcraft. For a while, the forces he calls upon seem to work in his favour, until they suddenly do not.

A story of this kind might easily have been told as an old-fashioned scarefest about the eternal struggle between tradition and change or clashing belief systems. That would have been a perfectly valid route. Instead, Ique Langa takes a very different approach in his debut feature. Working in luminous black and white, he crafts stark, striking images in which little appears to happen on the surface. The dialogues are simple, the rhythm steady and unhurried, as if born from days lived beneath a relentless sun.

O profeta is a film of pared-back beauty that looks unflinchingly at the ugliness that can take root in the everyday.

– Vanja Kaludjercic

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