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Year of production : 2017

Director(s) : Lucrecia MARTEL
Cast : Gimenez Cacho DANIEL, Lola DUENAS, Matheus NACHTERGAELE

Producer(s) : Agustín ALMODÓVAR, Pedro ALMODÓVAR, Joslyn BARNES, Alejandro CACETTA, Vânia CATANI, Juan manuel COLLADO, Pablo CRUZ, Benjamín DOMÉNECH, Eva EISENLOEFFEL, Claire GADEA, Santiago GALLELLI, Juan pablo GALLI, Gael garcía BERNAL, Esther GARCÍA, Danny GLOVER, Guillermo KUITCA, Marie-pierre MACIA, Michel MERKT, Marta NÚÑEZ PUERTO, Juan PERDOMO, Leontine PETIT, Susan ROCKEFELLER, Matias ROVEDA, Georges SCHOUCAIR, Julia SOLOMONOFF, Angelisa STEIN, Fabiana TISCORNIA, Luís URBANO, Juan VERA

The latest film by Lucrecia Martel (La Ciénaga, The Holy Girl, The Headless Woman), based on a novel by Antonio Di Benedetto, is dedicated to, as the eminent Argentinean writer and journalist Martin Caparrós (the author of Hunger) expressed it, "the victims of expectations." Zama is a prisoner of the office he holds, constantly tethered to rituals and forms, defining himself by his social position. The tropical heat and moisture quickly dissolve those forms, however, ridiculing the supposed robustness of the colonial powers, exposing the emptiness of rituals brought from Europe, which are simply grotesque there. The more desperately the protagonist clings to his rigid identities as an official, a colonizer, a proud white man, the more frustration and humiliation he encounters: his transfer request is refused, he's rejected by a woman, his salary is misplaced, getting stuck somewhere in transit. By setting her story in a cultural borderland, where the representatives of the Spanish crown are forced into uncertain coexistence with the indigenous people from those lands, Martel gives Zama a chance for transformation and liberation- chance that comes with a fall.