Landfall

Cecilia Aldarondo’s recent film is a beautiful, painful meditation on the devastation in Puerto Rico following Hurricane María in 2017. Wanting “to take stock of what María left behind: the emotional as much as practical aftermath of the storm,” Aldarondo employed what she has called a prismatic approach to examine the tragic pile-up of interconnected crises. The traumatic lack of action by the US and Puerto Rican governments in response to the disaster is refracted through the ramifications of climate change and crippling debt, the legacy of colonialism, and the emergence of disaster capitalism. The question of whether recovery is possible through official channels is contrasted with the hope born of popular protests and community activism. For filmmaker Brett Story, “Landfall is an exquisite film, by turns tender and compassionate, cinematically adventurous and self-assured, and politically unflinching in its indictment of those moneyed interests now feasting on the US colony’s organized neglect.”