Casa de Lava

Cape Verde’s colonial histories and displaced emigrants have been central to many of Costa’s films, but his rarely seen second feature is the only one thus far to have been shot on the archipelago. Leão (Isaach de Bankolé), the comatose laborer whose removal to his home at Fogo jump-starts the film, is a clear precursor to Costa’s now iconic Ventura, with whom he shares a profession and a past. But the fierce, unblinking attention the film gives to the colonists is the revelation: Edith Scob as an aging Portuguese woman who has made the island her ill-fitting home; Pedro Hestnes as her son; and Inês de Medeiros as the Lisbon nurse who accompanies Leão. Inspired by Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie, this is one of Costa’s most direct reckonings with Portugal’s colonial legacy. A Grasshopper Film release.