Neptune Frost

U.S./Rwanda, 105m, DCP

Showtimes & Tickets

Screened June 3–16, 2022

Multi-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams brings his unique dynamism to this Afrofuturist vision, a sci-fi punk musical that’s a visually wondrous amalgamation of themes, ideas, and songs that Williams has explored in his work, notably his 2016 album MartyrLoserKing. Co-directed with his partner, the Rwandan-born artist and cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman, the film takes place in the hilltops of Burundi, where a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective. From their camp in an otherworldly e-waste dump, they attempt a takeover of the authoritarian regime exploiting the region’s natural resources — and its people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry. Set between states of being — past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory and prescience — Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends. A Kino Lorber release

In Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Swahili, French, and English; with English subtitles

Official Selection: Cannes Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, New York Film Festival

A film by Saul Williams Anisia Uzeyman

Neptune Frost utilizes everything the medium of film has to offer – visually, sonically, and emotionally.”

Jourdain Searles, The Hollywood Reporter

It is like a dream: fitful, feverish, promising.”

Lisa Kennedy, Variety

Mind-bending, an Afrofuturist fantasia that is also a musical, a science fiction parable and a hacker manifesto.”

A.O. Scott, The New York Times [Critic's Pick]