5:00 p.m.	Down to Earth Pedro Costa (Portugal/France/Germany, 1994)

(Casa de lava). Escaping his native Portugal to film in the Cape Verde islands, Costa discovered a Herzogian landscape that suited this sleepwalker’s tale of isolation and alienation; he also connected with a community that would prove integral to his future filmmaking. Loosely drawing from such disparate sources as Rossellini’s Stromboli and Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie, Down to Earth follows a prim Portuguese nurse who accompanies a comatose Cape Verdean immigrant (Isaach de Bankole) back to his isolated island village of barren lava, sun-baked days, and dark, nightmarish nights. With the inhabitants lost in their own private rituals and dreams, the nurse attempts to fit in, but soon finds herself just as adrift, and possibly in danger. The island’s bizarre landscape is the film’s true star, though, its jagged, violent beauty well accompanied by the music of Raul Andrade, a famed Cape Verdean musician who also appears onscreen.

—Jason Sanders

• Written by Costa. Photographed by Emmanuel Machuel. With Inês de Medeiros, Isaach de Bankole, Edith Scob, Pedro Hestnes. (110 mins, In Portuguese with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Cinemateca Portuguesa)

Preceded by short:
Tarrafal (Pedro Costa, Portugal, 2007). Costa returned to Cape Verde for this look at an island political prison. (16 mins, In Portuguese with English subtitles, Color, Beta SP, From Pedro Costa)

• (Total running time: 127 mins)