ERRANTE: LA CONQUISTA DEL HOGAR (WANDERER: THE CONQUEST OF HOME)

Argentina 2022 - DCP - 77 minutes, in Spanish with English subtitles

Director: Adriana Lestido

Producers: Lita Stantic, Adriana Lestido

Print Courtesy: Adriana Lestido/Punctum Sales

Between January 2019 and May 2020, Adriana Lestido, one of the world’s greatest photographers, embarked on a trip, with no company and no assistance whatsoever, through the Arctic Circle and the Svalbard Islands, an icy, inhospitable region near the North Pole. During those months, she captured a still unknown ecosystem in all its splendor. In this white desert, the vast, the enigmatic, and the melancholy merge with elegant, fixed images that take over most of the film. It’s truly an “explorational documentary” because in each scene, Lestido turns the camera into a tool for research not only of the space, but also of her own solitary personal experience. Lestido’s book Antardita Negra perfectly and beautifully captures the Antarctic, so much closer to her Argentine homeland, but Errante speaks to a mirroring yet more mysterious landscape, closer to our home here, literally and otherwise (though perhaps not so much in July!). —KE

Saturday, July 8 6:20PM | MFC 3

Tuesday, July 11 4PM | WOH

Kenya, USA 2022 - DCP - 78 minutes, in English and in Swahili with English subtitles

Directors: Lauren DeFilippo, Sam Soko

Producers: Jordan Fudge, Amanda Pollak, Tess Cohen, Jeremy Allen, Lauren DeFilippo, Sam Soko

Print Courtesy: Insignia Films

In this fascinating exploration and incisive critique of Western philanthropy and Silicon Valley social experimentation, filmmakers Sam Soko and Lauren DeFilippo document attempts to bring Universal Basic Income (UBI) to the Kenyan village of Kogutu. For twelve years, the nonprofit GiveDirectly vows to grant villagers a monthly stipend, no strings attached, in the world’s largest UBI experiment. But what are the real-life consequences of this seemingly infallible project on the cultural traditions and daily realities of the villagers themselves, villagers already skeptical of the nonprofit sector and its outdated and often destructive white saviorism? Soko and DeFillippo manage to keep the experiences and shifting perspectives of the Kogutu citizens front and center, demonstrating how clumsy bureaucracy, outsider jealousy, and First World biases affect the ongoing success of this perhaps overly ambitious undertaking. –SR