Neptune Frost

Neptune Frost is a 2021 science fiction romantic musical co-directed by Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman and starring Cheryl Isheja, Elvis Ngabo and Kaya Free. Set in a post-civil war Rwanda spanning past, future, and present times, the film follows the relationship between an intersex hacker and a coltan miner. Ezra Miller is a producer and Lin-Manuel Miranda an executive producer.

It had its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors Fortnight section on July 8, 2021, and was released in the United States on June 3, 2022, by Kino Lorber to critical acclaim. Neptune Frost is the name of a black Revolutionary soldier who served in the Continental Army in 1775.

Neptune Frost uses music, African oral tradition and song-poetry to express the complexity of Burundian and Rwandan identities explored in the film. The narrative structure unfolds through musical and rhetorical allegories around themes of patriarchy and feminism.

Plot
The film is an Afrofuturist story set in a village in Burundi made of computer parts, and centers on the relationship between Neptune, an intersex runaway, and Matalusa, a coltan miner, whose love leads a hacker collective.

The film begins with images of mining and sounds of communal song. In the mines are Matalusa and his brother Tekno, who dies from the power of coltan he mines. The death of Tekno prompts Matalusa's hero's journey. Neptune's story also begins with death, as they attend a funeral for their grandmother in which they also sing together to express their grief. The subconscious connection between Matalusa and Neptune, manifesting as visions sent by their future child, draw them together, each embarking on their on-the-road journeys across the country to find the "Unanimous Goldmine" community. "Unanimous Goldmine" is a code of unity that identifies characters' kinship to the group of young adults that encompass it in another realm layered upon reality. The two become the leaders of this community, bonded by powerful rhetoric through speech and song as well as a mission to subvert the big tech powers that control the internet.

Neptune's technokinetic abilities allow them to spread their ideas, creed and philosophy across the world through a series of hacks. Unable to trace its origin, Neptune's virus is blamed on Russia and China by world powers until Memory's brother, Innocent, posing in the disguise of the autocratic state's police officers, stumbles upon the hidden Unanimous Goldmine and briefly reunites with his sister. Memory compassionately scolds him for an earlier encounter with Neptune where discovering their gender caused him to react violently. She asks him to leave them in peace and discourages him from speaking with Neptune. But it is too late, as he has been followed by a drone which subsequently ousts them to the world. The community is quickly destroyed by an explosion, though Neptune survives, having been away at the time of execution. The lone survivor of the attack, they project and reveal their existence to world before the film ends.

Analysis
The Afrofuturist film delves into the power of the subconscious and surreal not just with plot but also with song, costuming, and the names of the characters such as Memory and Psychology. Vogel writes "the surrealists proudly proclaim poetry (the subconscious) the supreme weapon of knowledge and conquest," in Film as A Subversive Art. Neptune Frost exemplifies the surrealist conquest over the foreign material powers that exploit the region, body, mind, and soul, most directly referenced near the end of the film when China and Russia mentioned directly as the oppressors using and exploiting tech.

Cast

 * Cheryl Isheja as Neptune
 * Elvis Ngabo as Neptune
 * Bertrand "Kaya Free" Ninteretse as Matalusa
 * Eliane Umuhire as Memory
 * Dorcy Rugamba as Innocent
 * Rebecca Uwamahoro as Elohel
 * Trésor Niyongabo as Psychology
 * Eric Ngangare "1Key" as Potolo
 * Natacha Muziramakenga as Binya
 * Cécile Kayirebwa as Nun
 * Diogene "Atome" Ntarindwa as Priest

Production
The project was originally conceived by Saul Williams as a graphic novel and stage musical. In 2018, Williams launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds, with Lin-Manuel Miranda joining as an executive producer.

In February 2020, it was announced that Ezra Miller and Stephen Hendel were set to produce, with principal photography commencing. Production took place over the course of 27 days in Rwanda.

Release
Neptune Frost had its world premiere on July 8, 2021. at the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where it was a nominee for the Queer Palm. It had its North American premiere in the Wavelengths program at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2021. It also screened at the New York Film Festival on October 2, 2021. and the 2022 Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2022. It had its Australian premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival, where it won the Bright Horizons Award.

In December 2021, Kino Lorber acquired distribution rights. It was released in the United States on a limited release on June 3, 2022.

Reception
The site's critical consensus reads "Bursting with ideas and ambition, Neptune Frost is difficult to describe -- and just as hard to resist." On Metacritic, the film had a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

In November 2022, the film was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography.