Ana Vaz’s 'Hanabi' seeks lucidity in the aftermath of nuclear catastrophe

The nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan is the focus of the Brazilian director's film, which won a Special Jury Mention at the Locarno Film Festival. She tells Swissinfo why cinema should slow viewers down, challenge perception, and confront the systems that normalize catastrophe. The Brazilian filmmaker Ana Vaz avoids describing her work as “experimental.” She prefers the more capacious “cinema-poetry,” which acknowledges her films’ subversiveness without attaching a label that, in her vi...

By Rafaela Bassili, Locarno Critics Academy