26/09/2024 - Mariana Rondón delivers a dystopian tale set in a semi-abandoned zoo in a city reminiscent of Caracas, in a metaphor for the run-down reality of modern-day Venezuelan society

Presented in the Horizontes Latinos section of the 72nd San Sebastian International Film Festival, Zafari by Mariana Rondón is the story of a non-place. It’s about a skyscraper with a pool which is also home to a zoo and various families, all interlinked by their living arrangements. The central focus of the film is Ana (Daniela Ramírez), her husband (Francisco Denis) and her son, as well as a hippopotamus who has just arrived at the zoo.

The film takes as its starting point a curious news story dating back to 2016 (the death of a hippopotamus in Caracas Zoo) to explore the disintegration of a luxury apartment block which acts a metaphor for modern-day Venezuelan society. It’s a plot reminiscent of J.G. Ballard’s novel, “High-Rise”, which turns the distance between upper and lower floors into a metaphor for the distance between the different social classes, while the zoo becomes an arena where animals are the primary victims of an economic and social situation that’s degenerated to the point of bordering on surreal. As the film advances through awkward and grotesque scenes, the story becomes increasingly confused and incoherent, as if it were intent on escaping any kind of logic and were guided, instead, by the characters’ hunger.

This confusion doesn’t only seem to stem from the characters’ physical and mental incapacitation; and their descent into a state of wild animality in the case of Mariana Rondón (who won the Golden Shell at the festival’s 2013 edition with Bad Hair [+see also:
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Zafari takes us along in its descent into degradation, incapable as we are of taking a critical view on what’s around us, incapable of building a shared future, afraid and individualistic, ready and waiting to run away. Nobody’s doubting that this is the way things are, but perhaps the problem with this moral tale is this burning ambition to describe reality whilst concealing it under a mantle of fiction. In short, it brings nothing new to a genre which should be looking to the horizon, but which is actually refusing to make the effort to imagine something better.

Zafari was co-produced by Sudaca Films (Peru), Paloma Negra Films (Mexico), Still Moving (France), Klaxon Cultura Audiovisual (Brazil), Quijote Film (Chile), Selene Films (Domenican Republic) and Artefactos SF (Venezuela), while Spanish firm Feelsales will be managing sales.

(Translated from Italian)