The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced this morning the lineup for the main slate of the 55th edition of the New York Film Festival's main slate, which includes the U.S. premiere of the long-anticipated Zama by Argentine director Lucrecia Martel, as the only Latin American selection.
Martel ventures into the realm of historical fiction and makes the genre entirely her own in this adaptation of Antonio di Benedetto’s 1956 classic of Argentinean literature. In the late 18th century, in a far-flung corner of what seems to be Paraguay, the title character, an officer of the Spanish crown (plated by Mexican actor Daniel Giménez Cacho) born in the Americas, waits in vain for a transfer to a more prestigious location.
Martel renders Zama’s world—his daily regimen of small humiliations and petty politicking—as both absurd and mysterious, and as he increasingly succumbs to lust and paranoia, subject to a creeping disorientation. Precise yet dreamlike, and thick with atmosphere, Zama is a singular and intoxicating experience, a welcome return from one of contemporary cinema’s truly brilliant minds.
The 55th edition of the New York Film Festival will take place September 28 - October 15.
