Neptune Frost
Description
Replete with mind-altering visual and sonic imagery, this Afrofuturist mélange of music, poetry, and resistance is hypnotic and visionary. Set in Rwanda, the film depicts a genderqueer community of hackers and techno poets. Though plot is secondary to style and rhythm, there is a young man named Matalusa who mines coltan, an essential ingredient of cell phones. He meets Neptune, a messianic figure able to change genders. Other characters offer bits of wisdom or a simple invitation to put on headphones and join their dance. As one of them observes, “The war forced us into other dimensions,” and Neptune Frost brings a few of those dimensions to vivid life, carving out a bold new vision for Black cinema as it does so.
Trailer
Biographies
Rwandan artist Anisia Uzeyman is a playwright, stage director, actor, and filmmaker. Her credits as an actor include roles in Alain Gomis’s Tey (2012) and Guetty Felin’s Ayiti Mon Amour (2016), for which she also served as an associate producer. She has directed music videos for Sons of an Illustrious Father, Mehdi Cayenne, and her partner and Neptune Frost co-director Saul Williams. She shot her first feature, Dreamstates (2016), on an iPhone.
A native of New York state, Saul Williams is an acclaimed slam poet, rap artist, and actor. He has a BA in philosophy and acting from Morehouse College and an MFA in acting from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He received a Film Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Debut Performance for his role in Slam (1998). Among his acting credits are parts in King of the Korner (2000), K-PAX (2001), Tey (2012), Dreamstates (2016), and Akilla’s Escape (2020), for which he also composed the score. Neptune Frost is his directing debut.
