The Cinematheque

“The future of Black cinema … Utilizes everything the medium of film has to offer—visually, sonically, and emotionally.”

Jourdain Searles, Hollywood Reporter

Wowing audiences at The Cinematheque last summer, Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s formally daring, sonically dazzling Afrofuturist musical returns for an encore occasioned by the Chan Centre EXP concert ​“Black Futures,” featuring Williams. Set in a sci-fi Burundi that portals into strange, interdimensional realms, Neptune Frost tells of two cosmically connected runaways—an intersex hacker and a coltan miner—who, together with an enclave of computer-foraging cyberpunks, seed a techno-revolution to topple industry and oppression. The anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, bracingly queer work is the latest installment of American hip-hop poet Williams’s ​“MartyrLoserKing” multimedia project. The film’s pulsating songs are drawn largely from his 2016 album. The ravishing cinematography, bathed in glow-stick neon hues, is by William’s co-director (and wife) Uzeyman. Indigenous electronic collective The Halluci Nation (fka A Tribe Called Red) has a production credit, as does Lin-Manuel Miranda. In Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Swahili, French, and English with English subtitles.

“A bold, bizarre, and unflinchingly confident debut … Mesmerizing … A film and universe worthy of its place alongside the likes of Sun Ra’s Space Is the Place.”

Toussaint Egan, Polygon

“Groundbreaking … Utterly unprecedented.”

Michael Sicinski, MUBI Notebook