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Poster for Spell Reel

Spell Reel

2017 · 96 min

A slow, cerebral archival meditation that asks you to lean in and piece fragments of memory and history together.

Overview
The first image is in black and white, upside down and projected into a black box that then becomes the frame. It now hovers like a time capsule near a man’s face. He looks down, listening in on a female guerrilla fighter and translating her words from Fulani. Within the capsule, money is counted and paid out as a new currency, the numbers of the years run backwards in the black box. A 16-mm film glides through the man's hands and is transferred to a laptop screen frame by frame.

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In the UKNo streaming, rental or purchase options known.
In your watch list

How it feels

Written by AI. It can be wrong.

Tone
  • melancholicstrength 2 of 3
  • earneststrength 2 of 3
  • eeriestrength 1 of 3
Pacing
slow-burn, 1 of 4, from slow-burn to relentless
Attention
demanding, 4 of 4, from background-friendly to demanding
Themes
  • memory
  • politics
  • war
  • colonialism
  • identity
Places
  • countryside
Era
contemporary
Audience
adult
Form
  • documentary
  • nonlinear
Content intensity
  • Gore mild
  • Language mild
  • Violence mild
  • Sex none
All scales, 0 to 10
Scales, 0 to 10
ScaleValue0 to 10
Action1
Horror1
Humour1
Realism9
Romance1
Tension3
Darkness5
Complexity8
Emotional weight6

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Where to watch in the UK

No UK streaming, rental or purchase options are known.

Streaming data from JustWatch.TMDB

Details

Genres
documentary
Directed by
Filipa César
Written by
Sana Na N'Hada
Cinematography
Jenny Lou Ziegel
Runtime
96 min
Country
Guinea-Bissau, Germany, Portugal, France
Languages
Fulah, French, English

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