Zama
Danny Glover and Louverture Films
December 1 - 7, 2021
Martel’s intoxicating adaptation of Antonio di Benedetto’s 1956 classic of Argentine literature follows an officer of the Spanish crown in late-18th-century Paraguay as he succumbs to lust and paranoia.
The great Lucrecia Martel ventures into the realm of historical fiction and makes the genre entirely her own in this adaptation of Antonio di Benedetto’s 1956 classic of Argentine literature. In the late 18th century, in a far-flung corner of what seems to be Paraguay, the title character, an officer of the Spanish crown (Daniel Giménez Cacho) born in the Americas, waits in vain for a transfer to a more prestigious location. Martel renders Zama’s world—his daily regimen of small humiliations and petty politicking—as both absurd and mysterious, and, as he increasingly succumbs to lust and paranoia, subject to a creeping disorientation. Precise yet dreamlike, and thick with atmosphere, Zama is a singular and intoxicating experience, a welcome return from one of contemporary cinema’s truly brilliant minds. An NYFF55 Main Slate selection.
Watch our Q&A with Lucrecia Martel on Zama below.
Beautiful, hypnotic, mysterious and elliptical.
—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
The best film of 2018.
—Steve Macfarlane, BOMB Magazine
A masterpiece... intoxicating, spellbinding.
—David Fear, Rolling Stone
A cinematic marvel . . . See the movie, read the book and then, for pleasure, see the movie again.
—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
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