LANDFALL
Film poster for "Landfall" with upside down image of city skyline.
LANDFALL
Film poster for "Landfall" with upside down image of city skyline.
Through shard-like glimpses of everyday life in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, LANDFALL examines a ruined world at the brink of transformation, spinning a cautionary tale for our times

LANDFALL

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GRAND JURY PRIZE - DOC NYC BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE - Boston Latino International Film Festival | BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE - Guanajuato International Film Festival

Latinx Studies • Capitalism and Economic Inequality • Climate Change/Environmental Issues • (Post)Colonial Studies 


Date of Completion: 2020 | Run Time: 93 minutes​​ | Language: English/Spanish | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript and Discussion Guide (Available Upon Purchase) Director: Cecilia Aldarondo Producer: Ines Hofmann Kanna

Through shard-like glimpses of everyday life in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, LANDFALL is a cautionary tale for our times. Set against the backdrop of protests that toppled the US colony’s governor in 2019, the film offers a prismatic portrait of collective trauma and resistance. While the devastation of María attracted a great deal of media coverage, the world has paid far less attention to the storm that preceded it: a 72-billion-dollar debt crisis crippling Puerto Rico well before the winds and waters hit. LANDFALL examines the kinship of these two storms—one environmental, the other economic—juxtaposing competing utopian visions of recovery. Featuring intimate encounters with Puerto Ricans as well as the newcomers flooding the island, LANDFALL reflects on a question of contemporary global relevance: when the world falls apart, who do we become?

Video Librarian
"The understated documentary is both engaging and informative, bringing attention to what happened after the world's interest in Hurricane María waned. Landfall highlights the persistence, resilience, and courage of the Puerto Rican people as they fight for the future of their homes. Recommended."

Educational Media Reviews Online | Sara DeSantis, Reference and Research Librarian, University of South Carolina Upstate
“The documentary Landfall is a beautifully shot documentary depicting life in Puerto Rico in the two years between the destruction of Hurricane Maria in 2017 and when people took to the streets to remove Ricardo Rossello as Governor in 2019 [...] I recommend Landfall because of its amazing shots of life in Puerto Rico and the information that you get from all of the interviews.”

Moveable Fest
 | Stephen Saito, editor and writer
“Extraordinarily prescient… In Aldarondo’s extraordinary film, a crisis can bring out the worst in people, but also the best.”

Filmmaker Magazine | Brett Story
“[A]n exquisite film, by turns tender and compassionate, cinematically adventurous and self-assured.”

Hollywood Reporter | Jordan Mintzer, writer and producer
“For those of us whose memory of Hurricane Maria boils down to footage of President Donald Trump scornfully tossing out paper towels to a crowd at a disaster relief center, Cecilia Aldarondo’s documentary Landfall offers up a welcome flipside.”

 

Cecilia Aldarondo is a documentary director-producer from the Puerto Rican diaspora who makes films at the intersection of poetics and politics. Her latest film, LANDFALL, offers a prismatic portrait of collective trauma and resistance in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico. Her earlier documentary MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART (Tribeca 2016) had its World Premiere at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and was broadcast on POV in 2017. She is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2017 Women at Sundance Fellow, two-time MacDowell Colony Fellow, and recipient of a 2019 Bogliasco Foundation Residency. In 2019 she was named to DOC NYC's 40 Under 40 list and is one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film for 2015. She received the 2021 Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award from the International Documentary Association. She teaches at Williams College.

Associate Producer & Collaborator of LANDFALL

REQUEST A GOOD TALK WITH LALE NAMERROW PASTOR

Lale Namerrow Pastor is a queer, transfeminist person. Born in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico to a Dominican mother and absent father. They completed undergraduate studies in Photography and Art History at the University of Puerto Rico and continued academic studies in Film Production and Direction at the New York Film Academy in New York City. Lale currently resides in Puerto Rico, where they are a musical curator in the subversive queer scene, archival researcher and video producer. Among so much, they are Caribbean, activist, videographer, editor, soundperson, advisor, compañere, turba, and possibly everything that fits between those labels.