2024 · colonial · illness · plantation
Banzo
Directed by Margarida Cardoso2h 7m2024
1907. Afonso, a doctor, arrives at Principe Island to cure servants from a cocoa plantation “infected” with Banzo, nostalgia of the slaves, who are dying from starvation and suicide. The group is confined to the forest, where Afonso decides to heal them by trying to understand what is affecting their soul. Will he manage to save them?
Our read: Banzo (2024) reads as a heavy, slow-burn, inventive colonial · illness · plantation entry — measured in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, nihilistic in outlook, with a strong directorial signature.
Heavy, slow-burn, measured colonial / illness, inventive in texture. Nihilistic, mid-stakes, measured.
- heavy
- slow-burn
- intense
- bleak
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How Banzo feels to watch.
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What watching it is actually like.
“You want a haunting colonial drama about the soul-sickness destroying enslaved plantation workers.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if slavery, suicide and colonial brutality themes will wreck you.
Eight films that feel like this one.
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