“The Red Island”

Frenchman Robin Campillo looked for his childhood memories to photograph The red islandset in Madagascar in the early 1970s, and represented by little Thomas, the son of a soldier stationed there at the French base, which supports the independent Malagasy government against the rebels. Through his point of view, we follow the daily adventures of his family and the relationship with friendly families, and we get impressions of life at the base, the discomfort of many locals at the French presence and their interaction with the troops, as well as racial tensions, at the same time as the boy fantasizes about Fantômette, his favorite heroine from children’s books. The film has its successful moments, but is episodic and sleepy, and ends up resentful of the strident and dissonant anti-colonial diatribe launched by Campillo at the end.

“Banel and Adama”

The feature debut of French-Senegalese director Ramata-Toulaye Sy is set in a Senegalese village devastated by drought, mysterious livestock deaths and a crisis of local leadership. Banel and Adama are a young couple at the beginning of their lives and the boy is torn between pressures from family and friends to take on the role of leader of the small community, and his love for his wife, who wants more than anything to leave and live outside the city with her husband and confront the forces that keep them there. As well as a classic story of deranged love, banel & The Lady It is also an allegory about the conflict between the interests and needs of the community and the desires and frustrations of individuals who do not feel comfortable in the group. Depending on your point of view, Banel will be either a selfish character with no sense of solidarity, or a symbol of personal emancipation.

“Borderlands”

Eli Roth directs this adaptation of the video game of the same name. Cate Blanchett plays Lilith, a fearsome bounty hunter who is hired by Atlas, the powerful owner of a huge galactic corporation, to find his daughter Tina, kidnapped by members of his private militia, and who could be the key to the discovery of an alien treasure on the desolate and dangerous planet Pandora. Lilith then heads to Pandora, where she meets the little robot Claptrap and discovers that things are not exactly as Atlas explained to her, and that Tina, far from being a hostage of them, willingly accompanies them. A heterogeneous team of adventurers is then formed, pursued on one side by Atlas’s men and faced with successive dangers and horrors, on the other. Borderlands It was chosen as the film of the week by Observador and you can read the review here.