Zama

The end of the eighteenth century, an outpost of the Spanish crown on the bank of a river in South America. Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a judge in the king’s service, waits for his transfer to Lerma, where his wife and children live. The letter never comes. Instead: a governor who strings him along, the noblewoman Luciana (Lola Dueñas), who toys with him, a younger official who outmanoeuvres him, and a rumour of the bandit Vicuña Porto that haunts the colony. Years pass, Zama’s status sinks, his paranoia grows, until he joins an expedition sent to catch the bandit. “Zama” by Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/Spain 2017, tells of waiting as a condition and of colonialism as a disease.

The source is the 1956 novel by Antonio di Benedetto. Martel, whose films are otherwise set in the present, dispenses with period-drama realism and builds the era out of sounds, glances and minor characters; the images are as concrete as they are hallucinatory. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2017; Argentina submitted the film for the Oscar. “Zama” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2021 as a tribute to Lucrecia Martel, in the Berlinale Spotlight: World Cinema Fund section.

Shown at the 2021 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2021 · Film Archive