WORLD PREMIERE @ 2025 INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

Set in the future, on the island of Borinquen (the original, indigenous name by which Puerto Rico is popularly known), Luna Rosa: La 7ª ascensión de Atabey narrates the epic journey of Zur’na (powerfully interpreted by Flora Sylvestre). The unexpected arrival and immediate kidnapping of her brother will disrupt Zur’na’s quiet, secluded life. In the company of Vyeñu – a neighbour whose talkative nature contrasts with the woman’s stoic, silent presence – she will embark on an adventure to rescue her missing brother. But, during her time in the colony which is controlled by imperialist US forces, she’ll also discover the underpinning of a complex power-network that enslaves her people.

A science-fiction, dystopian plot; anti-colonialist and feminist politics; a variety of details from indigenous religion and myth; a personal journey to one’s own past and roots: these are some of the elements conjured by this inventive, ambitious and experimental film. With black-and-white cinematography and fantastic B-movie touches, Puerto Rican director Omar Rodríguez-López – who is also a noted musician – builds a compelling and dark universe full of secrets, tensions, bloody rituals and mind-control.

– Cristina Álvarez López

LUNA ROSA: THE SEVENTH ASCENSION OF ATABEY

Omar Rodríguez-López  |  Puerto Rico  |  2025  |  107 minutes  |  Harbour

https://www.panorama-cinema.com/V2/article.php?categorie=2&id=1254

A so-called witch defends her goat from the clutches of mysterious humanoid robots—ominous beings that accompany the religious and legislative authorities of Borinquen (the indigenous name for the "unincorporated territory" of Puerto Rico), reimagined here in a terrifying Latin-futurist vision. The new film from Omar Rodríguez-López, guitarist of The Mars Volta, Luna Rosa, is less complex than it is impassioned—furious, even—determined to expose, with unflinching defiance, the deteriorating state of the world’s oldest colony. By setting his story a century into the future, the musician-turned-filmmaker makes it clear that he sees no change coming under any future American administration. Instead, he envisions a Puerto Rico abandoned and imprisoned, reflecting a world of nightmarish oppression where political violence is inescapable and respite is nonexistent. Every individual is implanted with a Quartzel, a tiny biometric data chip that allows the regime to track their every move.

In this bleak world, rendered in stark black and white, the island’s inhabitants are forced to surrender their cloning rights to the imperialist American government, embodied by a grotesque presidential hologram lounging in a bathrobe. The omnipresent U.S. enforcers seek to control the island’s population by subjugating both their faith and labor force, trapping the heroine Zur’na (Flora Sylvestre)—who is searching for her kidnapped brother—in a relentless investigation that slowly unveils the insidious machinery suppressing any possibility of large-scale revolution. Alongside her is an unwitting companion, Vyeñu (Waldo Facco), a talkative and gullible, Don Quixote-like sidekick who serves as the audience’s gateway into the film’s carefully revealed world, never aspiring to encyclopedic explanation but instead immersing us in its lived-in dystopia.

The film reaches its climax in the depths of a Guantánamo-like prison, seamlessly merging its Caribbean and anti-colonial allegory with a defiant cultural celebration, particularly in ritualistic and bomba dance sequences. Rodríguez-López flips the grand sci-fi imagery of Dune on its head, using contrasting textures, settings, and costumes to create an aesthetic opposition that transcends the film itself. As arms writhe out of the ground in agony, as a loudspeaker blasts metal music into the endless night, and as the heroine moans in desperation for escape, the film’s sci-fi allegory sharpens into an uncompromising political statement. There is no room for ambiguity about the anger fueling this work—no hesitation in its vision of resistance. A shaman demands that the protagonist embrace the “perfect alignment with the law of polarity” so she may harness the strength to fight, to liberate, to believe—without a shred of doubt.

Both messianic in its trajectory and Dantesque in its structure, Luna Rosa unsettles and provokes with such staggering conviction that it becomes truly admirable.

Panorama Cinema / Mathieu Li-Goyette (translated from French)

Letterboxd

Watched by elian

im gonna be honest i fell asleep.. i might have flown too close to the sun

★★ Watched by Bente

It felt like an extended black mirror episode, a bit cliche and a plot I’ve seen before. I got bored and wanted the movie to be over. I did like the cinematography a lot.

★★★ Watched by Omar

Futuristic anti-colonial mythological story set in Puerto Rico-- crazy cool vision, but the director went a little too far with the meth