As the Academy seeks ways to bolster its Best International Feature category, the future of international cinema in the U.S. is looking bright. Though the Dominican Republic has only submitted 14 films to the Oscars since its debut, the country has sent entries every year since 2011. This year, the Caribbean country has chosen an impressive contender, though the auteur-crowded field will be a tough one to crack.
The second feature from Dominican filmmaker Ivan Herrera, “Bantú Mama” is a skillfully crafted and gorgeously shot drama about a French woman of African descent hiding out with a trio of scrappy kids in Santo Domingo.
With a script co-written by Herrera and his engaging lead actress Clarisse Albrecht, the story is an elegant synthesis of geography and identity, a fertile collaboration based on shared experience and connection to a place and culture. Taking pieces of her own background, Albrecht plays Emma, or Emmanuel,...
The second feature from Dominican filmmaker Ivan Herrera, “Bantú Mama” is a skillfully crafted and gorgeously shot drama about a French woman of African descent hiding out with a trio of scrappy kids in Santo Domingo.
With a script co-written by Herrera and his engaging lead actress Clarisse Albrecht, the story is an elegant synthesis of geography and identity, a fertile collaboration based on shared experience and connection to a place and culture. Taking pieces of her own background, Albrecht plays Emma, or Emmanuel,...
- 11/18/2022
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
When Emmanuelle (Clarisse Albrecht) first arrives in the Dominican Republic, her world immediately finds a welcome peace and a splash of color. She has left her drab and gray home life in France behind, if ever so briefly. But once she’s arrested for drug trafficking — just as she’s set to fly back, no less — Emma finds her entire world closing in on her, leaving her adrift in an alienating place. At first glance, Ivan Herrera’s film appears to immerse us in a Caribbean story that feels all too familiar. Except “Bantú Mama” is not set on perpetuating any stereotype-riddled stories about drug mules or crime in so-called “Third World” countries.
In fact, as soon as the film moves out of its thriller-esque first act, it settles quite nicely into a more relaxed sensibility. That happens as soon as Emma is taken in by a trio of kids who live by themselves,...
In fact, as soon as the film moves out of its thriller-esque first act, it settles quite nicely into a more relaxed sensibility. That happens as soon as Emma is taken in by a trio of kids who live by themselves,...
- 11/18/2022
- by Manuel Betancourt
- Variety Film + TV
Early on in writer-director Ivan Herrera’s inconspicuously layered “Bantú Mama,” the Dominican Republic’s current Oscar entry for Best International Feature Film, a brief display of joyful magical realism encapsulates the film’s subtle thesis of diasporic kinship.
With big smiles painted on their faces, three Afro-Dominican siblings — Cuki (Euris Javiel), T.I.N.A (Scarlet Reyes), and hulo (Arturo Perez) — jump up and down alongside an adult Afropean woman from France, Emma (Clarisse Albrecht), as if they were part of the Maasai people from Kenya. Suddenly, the clothes Cuki wears transform into the traditional attire and accessories of said tribe. For an instant, he and the Maasai are one and the same.
The moody drama speaks of the inextricable links between Africa and the Caribbean without ever discussing it in academic terms but, instead, illustrating the bond with everyday exchanges between the unexpected visitor from abroad and the locals.
With big smiles painted on their faces, three Afro-Dominican siblings — Cuki (Euris Javiel), T.I.N.A (Scarlet Reyes), and hulo (Arturo Perez) — jump up and down alongside an adult Afropean woman from France, Emma (Clarisse Albrecht), as if they were part of the Maasai people from Kenya. Suddenly, the clothes Cuki wears transform into the traditional attire and accessories of said tribe. For an instant, he and the Maasai are one and the same.
The moody drama speaks of the inextricable links between Africa and the Caribbean without ever discussing it in academic terms but, instead, illustrating the bond with everyday exchanges between the unexpected visitor from abroad and the locals.
- 11/18/2022
- by Carlos Aguilar
- The Wrap
In the early aughts, Cuban actor William Levy burst onto the telenovela scene, quickly amassing a fan base among women viewers. Since then, the actor and model has gone on to movies, English-language TV shows and even a season of “Dancing with the Stars.”
It helps to understand his previous work as a perennial thirst trap and overall handsome man to appreciate his turn into a steely gun-for-hire in Matías Moltrasio’s “En Brazos de un Asesino” (“In the Arms of an Assassin”).
Levy plays the titular assassin, Victor, and the movie wastes no time getting him in front of the camera. Quickly, we see him violently set up a contract with a drug lord named Guzman — not to be confused with “El Chapo” Guzman, or should he be? On Victor’s way out of the kingpin’s mansion, he realizes he’s picked up a stowaway, Sarai, too late.
It helps to understand his previous work as a perennial thirst trap and overall handsome man to appreciate his turn into a steely gun-for-hire in Matías Moltrasio’s “En Brazos de un Asesino” (“In the Arms of an Assassin”).
Levy plays the titular assassin, Victor, and the movie wastes no time getting him in front of the camera. Quickly, we see him violently set up a contract with a drug lord named Guzman — not to be confused with “El Chapo” Guzman, or should he be? On Victor’s way out of the kingpin’s mansion, he realizes he’s picked up a stowaway, Sarai, too late.
- 12/5/2019
- by Monica Castillo
- The Wrap
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