14-24 nov 2024
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The Nights Still Smell of Gunpowder

The Nights Still Smell of Gunpowder

As Noites Ainda Cheiram a Pólvora
Inadelso Cossa
Mozambique, France, Germany, Portugal, Netherlands, Norway
2024
93 min
Dutch Premiere
Best of Fests
Synopsis

Thirty-two years after the end of Mozambique’s civil war, in which a million people died, the smell of terror still hangs in the air. As a child, Inadelso Cossa was shielded from the cruel reality. Now he visits the village of his youth with his sound recordist Moises in a sensory search for the ghosts of the past.

Conversations with villagers—including his grandmother, who has dementia, and a former rebel, who drinks to forget—are punctuated by shots of family photos strewn among the leaves or an empty chair against the same background.

In a personal voice-over, Cossa reflects on the past, and how it resonates in the present, casting a shadow over the future. The memories he encounters are sometimes faded, fictionalized or distorted, and past and present seem to merge, especially in the dark of the night.

In this dream-like atmosphere, Cossa, who previously evoked his country’s violent past in A Memory in Three Acts (2016), now creates a penetrating, poetic ode to a people marked by collective trauma.

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Credits
93 min
color
DCP
Spoken languages: Tsonga, Portuguese
Director
    Inadelso Cossa
    Inadelso Cossa
Production
    Inadelso Cossa,
    Emilie Dudognon for IDA.IDA,
    Thomas Kaske
    Inadelso Cossa,
    Emilie Dudognon for IDA.IDA,
    Thomas Kaske
Co-production
    Manuel António Câmara for DuplaCena, Lda,
    Elisa Fernanda Pirir for Mer Film,
    Frank Hoeve
    Manuel António Câmara for DuplaCena, Lda,
    Elisa Fernanda Pirir for Mer Film,
    Frank Hoeve
Cinematography
    Inadelso Cossa
    Inadelso Cossa
Editing
    Inadelso Cossa
    Inadelso Cossa
Sound Design
    Moises Langa
    Moises Langa
Screenplay
    Inadelso Cossa
    Inadelso Cossa
World Sales
    Syndicado
    Syndicado
Screening copy
    Syndicado
    Syndicado

Stills

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