Mozambique / 2024 / 92mins / Documentary and Experimental / Changane and Portuguese

It is dark and stays dark. Through the medium of nightmares, sounds, absent images and a child’s black-and-white photo in dry foliage, the film – slowly and in fragments – explores the memory of the civil war in Mozambique, which lasted from 1977 to 1992. Archival material is carefully deployed. The fighters for independence (FRELIMO) and the rebels of the National Resistance (RENAMO) fought each other, and countless landmines claimed their victims. Filmmaker Inadelso Cossa, still a carefree child at the time, now visits his grandmother’s village. Victims, perpetrators, former rebel fighters and surviving civilians live here. Cossa asks the sound recordist Moises, who hears voices from the graves at dusk: “Do you want to talk about it?” The filmmaker’s grandmother is suffering from the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s and can only remember at night. A former rebel numbs himself with alcohol and continues the battles in his soul. The echoes of horror are omnipresent. Against the backdrop of Mozambique’s now taboo civil war history, As Noites Ainda Cheiram a Pólvora develops a sensory approach to ghosts, to missing and fictitious memories.

Inadelso Cossa

Inadelso Cossa is a film director, producer and DOP, member of the (AMPAS) Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science since 2020. Founder of 16mmFILMES a production company focus on creative documentary and feature films. His films address themes such as post-colonial memory, post-Civil War trauma, silent voices and collective amnesia in Mozambique. The unofficial history of his country is almost always the vehicle of his cinema where the director positions himself on a personal perspective. His first feature-length documentary: A Memory in Three Acts made a world premiere at the festival IDFA - International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The film was selected for Durban film Mart 2014, and Locarno Open Doors 2014. Won the Jury Special Award at the Zanzibar Int. Film Festival in 2018 and the Flemish Commission for Unesco at Afrika film Festival Leuven, Belgium 2020.s
 
Inadelso Cossa was invited to participate as a jury in several festivals such IDFA 2018, Doc Sheffield 2018, Golden Tree Int. Documentary film festival 2019, World Press Photo 2020 and documentary programmer at Durban international film Festival 2023. Hot Docs Blue Ice Fund pre-selection committee 2024 and Sheffield Meet market preselection committee 2024. 
His second feature film The Nights Still smell of gunpowder made a world premiere at Berlinale Forum 2024 and international premiere at CPH: DOX 2024, The film won the special jury Prize at Olhar de Cinema – Curitiba International Film Festival 2024, Special mention at Lima Alterna International film festival and Porto post Doc, Jury Prize at Doc Lisboa International film festival 2024 and best documentary at Africa Movie Academy awards.
 
 
 
 Karingana the dead tell no tales - (short experimental) 2020
A Memory in Three Acts - (feature documentary) 2016
A Quiet Memory - (short documentary) 2014
Xilunguine, the Promised land - (Short documentary) 2010
 
 
 
 

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