José Miguel Ribeiro’s film is a poetic and heartbreaking portrait of the history of this country, ravaged for many years by civil war. Heart stroke.
The revolution devours its children, dreams turn into nightmares. The film opens with a man running from gunfire. Bullets hit him, he collapses in a pool of water. A tree, a big tree, is born where man lay dead. Primary colors, animated painting, voice-over, the tone is set: fantasy is within reach of reality for those who want to watch with their heart. Inspired by the play by José Eduardo Agualusa and Mia Couto, In Caixa preta, Nayola is the first Angolan animated film about a country ravaged by civil war for almost a quarter of a century. The past and the present meet, intersect, giving the story a form of unreality, of legend. A narrative that favors emotion.
The prayer of the absent
The film is haunted by the absent, sucked in by war. The story takes place between 1995 and 2011. Three generations of women, Lelena (the grandmother), Nayola (the daughter) and Yara (the granddaughter) narrate this country. “I don’t think your parents are alive. The war ended exactly eight years and twelve days ago. They had plenty of time to find their way home.” entrusts the grandmother to her granddaughter Yara. The three women went through tragedies. Lelena lost her husband, killed by Portuguese settlers. Her daughter, Nayola, who went to look for her husband, Ekumbi, no longer gives any sign of life. Her granddaughter, Yara, continues to hope for her parents’ return. The three women are traumatized by the wars, part of them amputated.
The country is criss-crossed by the military, in search of young rebels. Yara is a rapper, she dreams of a better world. She sells records on the sly. Hunted by the police, she takes refuge with her grandmother, in a slum in Luanda. That evening, a masked man bursts into her home. There, we enter a poetic world where the real and the unreal intermingle, a fantastic world. Nayola, a great epic film.
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The sheet
Gender : Animation, Drama
Director: Jose Miguel Ribeiro
Actors: Ciomara Morais, Angelo Torres
Duration : 1h23
Exit : 8 March 2023
Distributer : Urban Distribution
Warning: scenes, comments or images may offend the sensibilities of viewers
Angola. Three generations of women in a civil war that has lasted 25 years: Lelena (the grandmother), Nayola (the daughter) and Yara (the granddaughter). Past and present intertwine. Nayola goes in search of her husband, who disappeared at the worst moment of the war. Decades later, the country is finally at peace but Nayola has not returned. Yara has now become a rebellious teenager and a very subversive rap singer. One night, a masked intruder breaks into their house, armed with a machete. A meeting they could never have imagined…