Neptune Frost

As troubled as Rwanda has been and now in the news again thanks to political machinations that we need not concern ourselves about, there is more to it. Cinema being one and Neptune Frost could well be a breakout movie for the country and filmmakers.

Neptune Frost is very much the baby of composer and writer Saul Williams who wrote and co-directed with Anisia Uzeyman.

Set in Burundi (filmed in Rwanda) Neptune (Elvis Ngabo) is a disparate character wandering the countryside when he is transformed into a woman (Cheryl Isheja). From there the mission with a rag bag collection of cobalt miner’s ad hackers is to confront the authorities who have been repressing them for the exploitation of the mineral and repressing rights.

There is a fierce political edge to Neptune Frost as the cast in English, Swahili, Kirundi, Kinyarwanda and French, take aim at the plight of the dispossessed, social and natural exploitation. Curiously this includes a segment from the Old Testament and Ezekial and his vision of God descending to earth. Its imaginatively done with bicycle wheels, that also exposes the paucity of the budget.

The film has a polemic to push though that tends to get buried with the scattershot approach to the narrative. It is a beautiful film however and when the effects come into sync with the narrative and music as when the hackers are doing their job and wandering into cyberspace it brings to mind the mind-blowing (expanding?) visuals of a Hawkwind concert.

For all its visual power it does at times come over as filmed performance art rather than an actual film. The acting is fine, the impression is that the priority are the visuals that possibly overwhelm the points that Williams is striving to make. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting, challenging, visual watch with an excellent soundtrack by Saul Williams.

Neptune Frost opens on 4 November and the directors are doing a number of Q&As.

Details here: https://anti-worldsreleasing.co.uk/pages/neptune-frost-2022