Androids Dream + Nova Dubai

Q&A with Ion de Sosa and Gustavo Vinagre

Ion de Sosa’s haunting second feature, Androids Dream, is simultaneously a meditation on Spain’s economic crisis and on terrorism (and a sly reimagining of Philip K. Dick’s seminal cyberpunk novel), while Gustavo Vinagre’s Nova Dubai follows a group of young gay Brazilian men as they candidly explore their desires, capitalism, family, and self-destructive impulses against the backdrop of a contemporary, overdeveloped urban neighborhood.

Androids Dream / Sueñan los androides
Ion de Sosa, Spain/Germany, 2014, DCP, 61m
Spanish and Basque with English subtitles
A drifting portrait of Spain’s economic crisis, and a sly reimagining of Philip K. Dick’s seminal cyberpunk novel, this beguiling second feature from Ion de Sosa promises to haunt. In the year 2052, a nameless man silently travels through semi-completed high-rise apartments and grocery stores, assassinating random civilians without warning. More intimate scenes of the city’s inhabitants socializing—but never discussing the elephant in the room—underscore the absurd context of his violence. As the story shifts to the openness of the countryside, all action is eventually and surprisingly rendered futile. U.S. Premiere

Nova Dubai / New Dubai
Gustavo Vinagre, Brazil, 2014, DCP, 50m
Portuguese with English subtitles
Gustavo Vinagre’s documentary unapologetically depicts a variety of gay fantasies—violent, incestuous, comic, romantic, degrading, or all of the above—against the backdrop of a contemporary, overdeveloped urban neighborhood. Though the men participating in these sex acts are unable to reclaim or slow the disappearance of their communal space, their insurrection is as much a radical meditation on desire as a repudiation of shallow, consumer-obsessed millennial gay culture. North American Premiere