05/07/2024 - In Margarida Cardoso’s feature, a mysterious illness is befalling the workers on a remote African island

Its dark silhouette rises up against the clouds, its rough, jagged cliffs piercing like snarling teeth through the tropical forests enveloping this tiny dot of land in the middle of the ocean. This is the first glimpse one catches of Boa Esperança, a Portuguese-run, cocoa-producing island off the coast of Africa. This is not some tropical paradise, but a looming death trap, and the destination of main character Dr Afonso Paiva (Carloto Cotta). In Margarida Cardoso’s Banzo [+see also:
trailer
interview: Margarida Cardoso
film profile], which has had its international premiere in the Crystal Globe Competition at the Karlovy Vary IFF, he has been sent to treat a mysterious, deadly illness amongst the black workforce.

“Banzo”, as a nurse calls it, was first described in the 19th century as a state of psychological depression that befell enslaved Africans in the colony of Brazil. At the beginning of the 20th century, in 1907 to be exact, and many thousands of kilometres away, the Portuguese plantation owners have settled on calling it “nostalgia”. And while slavery might have been formally abolished in the colonies, there is little to suggest that any of the practices have died out.

Talking to a group of ill workers from Mozambique, Paiva soon realises that it’s likely that none of these people embarked on a boat willingly. “Why do you want to die?” he asks. “We don’t want to die; we want to go back home,” is the answer. Cardoso, who first dealt with the colonial past of her home country in 2004’s The Murmuring Coast, does not hold back when establishing just how exploitative life for these unfree workers really is, and why choosing to die might come as a relief in a place where there is nowhere to go.

Her naturalistic approach will, however, raise questions at a time when the debate about colonialism and decolonisation has gained momentum and added a variety of different voices to the mix. Cardoso does introduce a central black character to equal out the white dominance. Photographer Alphonse (Hoji Fortuna) may be the only free black person on the island in that he can leave whenever he wishes.

It isn’t Cardoso’s place, however, to take the point of view of the oppressed, and she is well aware of that. This is the story of the colonisers, with the black population forming a quiet, indistinguishable backdrop. This results partially in the uncomfortable reproduction of hegemonic violence. There are exoticising pictures taken of workers while corpses are being carried off in the background, masks with long hooks are forced upon people’s heads to keep them from eating dirt, and there are dehumanising force-feedings and burials of bodies with their arms sticking out. Is that what we still need today? Aren’t there other methods or other voices we can use to approach colonial and post-colonial violence?

What Cardoso manages very well, though, is challenging the sanitised state of Eurocentric history. “Repatriation” is the cure that Paiva prescribes for the sick workers, but that is not an economically viable option for the governor. When the Mozambican workers are sent away to perish out of sight, Paiva invites Alphonse along to document the truth of this place. But it is no use, as Alphonse sharply points out: “The rest of the world will just see one more negro”.

Banzo is a Portuguese-French-Dutch co-production staged by Uma Pedra no Sapato, in co-production with Les Films de L’après-midi, Damned Films and BALDR Film.