ITVS describes Cecilia Aldarondo’s documentary
Landfall (Spanish, English; 91 minutes):
After the landfall of Hurricane María in 2017, Puerto Rico grapples with a devastated infrastructure and multi-billion dollar debt as outside investors descend—not to bail out communities, but to cash in. Set against the backdrop of protests that toppled the US colony’s governor in 2019, Landfall shares kaleidoscopic glimpses of collective trauma and resistance. Everyday puertorriqueños—subsistence farmers, teachers, activists, and more—meet an incoming wave of cryptocurrency traders, luxury real estate developers, and the politicians leveraging the crisis to recruit their extractive business ventures. In the midst of it all daily life goes on. The next generation of Puerto Ricans find themselves at an inflection point between the dream of a socialist utopia and the reality of recolonization. The new Puerto Rico poses a question of global urgency: when the world falls apart, what does a just recovery look like?