A visual and aural feast, NEPTUNE FROST is an Afro-Futurist musical that is a cry for liberation through technology. The best science fiction is allegorical to the societal climate of its times, but it is also done so through a white male gaze. From EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE to the exemplary works of Octavia E. Butler and Haruki Murakami, it’s refreshing to see perspectives told that is not the status quo. Afro-futurism is an exciting, sub-sect of sci-fi that has always been in the margins but the resurgence of this genre in the last two decades in literature, graphic novels and now film and tv (I guess BLACK PANTHER counts but that was IP created by white men that have now been reclaimed by Black artists like Ryan Coogler and Ta-Nehisi Coates), is truly exciting. NEPTUNE FROST, from multi hyphenate poet-rapper-writer-musician Saul Williams and his wife, Rwandan artist and cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman, is radical, revolutionary, infusing the natural world and a cyberpunk aesthetic that is both fantastical, but feels very lived-in. It’s sci-fi from the perspective of humanity’s most down-trodden and through centuries of systemic racism as the foundation of capitalism and greed comes revolutionary art and music. The DNA of NEPTUNE FROST comes from centuries of pain, connected through a mycelium of humanity that beats fervently. The film is singular in vision and one of the best films of the year.
