The Fortunate Isles

In Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado’s seething second feature, the brutal landscape and open skies of the Canary Islands — once home of the Guanches people, conquered by the Crown of Castile between 1402 and 1496, marking the first instance of modern European settler imperialism in Africa — are setting to a restrained epic of colonial regret and human impulse.

While the unforgiving landscape maintains ultimate power, Fátima (Luisa Ahl Laabiad), a woman enslaved to a decrepit and deteriorating Marquis on a desolate archipelago, must contend with her near-term pregnancy and the island’s few other parched and malcontent residents. As her master refuses to relinquish his paltry water supply to his desperate citizens, and his son closes in on his fief, an insurrection brews. Now, Fátima must balance her loyalty to herself, her love, and her future child against a corroded power dynamic.

Writing-directing duo Girón and Delgado (the short Neither God Nor Santa Maria, TIFF ‘15) harness the sparse landscape, weaving together its scarcity with the intensity of human tragedy. As conflicting desires emerge for Fátima, between protecting her position and protecting others from immense suffering, the tactile camera and uniquely portentous style culminate in a ruthless portrait of 16th century conquest. Ahl Laabiad’s stoic and furious performance as Fátima pulses with humanity’s insistent history of revolt, embodying those erased by retellings of colonial struggles and ecclesiastical narratives.

Fàtima’s ultimate choice in this searing, poetic tale carries the colossal weight of memory, the drama evoking Heinrich Heine’s 1820 poem “Belshazzar,” where a king’s tyranny and hubris lead to his own doom at the hands of his subjects.

DOROTA LECH