ZAMA

The late eighteenth century. Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), an officer of the Spanish crown, sits at a remote outpost by the river awaiting his transfer – back to his wife and children, to a better town. The governor keeps putting him off, the petition to the king is never sent, and the years pass. Zama courts a married noblewoman without success, loses rank and quarters, and finally joins a troop sent to hunt the bandit Vicuña Porto – of whom no one knows whether he even exists. In “Zama” (Argentina 2017), based on the 1956 novel by Antonio di Benedetto, Lucrecia Martel tells of the slow decay of a man waiting for a life that never comes.

Martel stages the colonial world as a theatre of the ridiculous: heavy wigs in the heat, llamas in the government office, a soundtrack in which voices and animals overlay the images. The film premiered in 2017 at the Venice Film Festival. “Zama” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2020 in the Berlinale World Cinema Fund section, as part of a tribute to Lucrecia Martel.

Shown at the 2020 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2020 · Film Archive