Casa de Lava
World Cinema
•
1h 45m
Directed by Pedro Costa • Drama • With Inês de Medeiros, Isaach De Bankolé • 1994 • 108 minutes
In only his second feature, Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa (Horse Money, In Vanda’s Room) brilliantly reworked Jacques Tourneur’s classic I Walked with a Zombie into a reflection on his country’s colonial legacy. A nurse, Mariana (Inês de Medeiros), accompanies Leão (Isaach de Bankolé) to his home on the volcanic islands of Cape Verde after an accident leaves him in a coma — but he goes unrecognized by fellow denizens, leaving Mariana trapped with and eventually entranced by a mysterious community. Never before released in the U.S. and now beautifully restored, Casa de Lava foreshadows the masterful films that would follow, yet is an extraordinary, ravishing work in its own right.
"A beautiful restoration." —Film Comment
“Costa creates moody, luminous tableaux to conjure an incantatory, Faulknerian earthiness." —The New Yorker
Up Next in World Cinema
-
Frantz
Directed by Francois Ozon • Drama • With Pierre Niney, Paula Beer • 2017 • 114 minutes
Set in Germany and France in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, (1914-1918), Frantz recalls the mourning period that follows great national tragedies as seen through the eyes of the war’s “lost ge...
-
Our Time
Directed by Carlos Reygadas • Drama • With Carlos Reygadas, Natalia López, Phil Burgers • 2018 • 87 minutes
A family lives in the Mexican countryside raising fighting bulls. Esther is in charge of running the ranch, while her husband Juan, a world-renowned poet, raises and selects the beasts. Al...
-
La Petite Lili
Directed by Claude Miller • Drama • With Ludivine Sagnier, Nicole Garcia, Bernard Giraudeau, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Robinson Stévenin, Julie Depardieu, Yves Jacques, Michel Piccoli. • 2003 • 100 minutes
Ludivine Sagnier stars as Lili, the love and muse of an idealistic young filmmaker in this mod...
