In 2016, Nanfu Wang — an acclaimed documentary filmmaker finest identified at the moment for the candid, private method wherein she exposes the far-reaching prices of state propaganda — had simply accomplished her first characteristic movie. Hooligan Sparrow toured worldwide movie festivals, and at a type of festivals, Rosa María Payá was within the viewers. What she noticed on display screen — a Chinese language girl combating for justice for six elementary faculty women who had been sexually abused, incurring the wrath of native police and nationwide officers — resonated along with her personal struggles again in Cuba. The daughter of the main dissident of Fidel Castro’s Communist Cuba, Oswaldo Payá, she picked up the place he left off after his abrupt dying in a mysterious automobile crash in 2012. Payá sought Wang out after the screening, and every discovered within the different a comrade and confidante.
Over the following seven years, Wang adopted Payá from Cuba to Puerto Rico to the USA, documenting her combat for a democratic Cuba and witnessing her transformation from an unwitting successor of her father to a frontrunner in her personal proper. The ensuing movie turned Night time Is Not Everlasting (2024). A portrait of Payá informed from Wang’s perspective and along with her private inflection, the movie is a examine of autocracy, resistance, and hope.
Poster for Night time Is Not Everlasting (2024), directed by Nanfu Wang
Wang’s movies usually include a stunning narrative flip simply over midway by way of. Right here, that flip is Wang’s likelihood discovery, whereas watching TV, of Payá within the entrance row of a Trump rally, smiling and cheering. How may a human rights champion, a pro-democratic chief, and a determine of freedom and justice endorse Trump, somebody who not-so-subtly resembles an autocrat? Wang leaves this query open. Her movies sometimes heart amorphous, usually self-contradictory establishments or concepts comparable to a specific state coverage, a authorities, or the very concept of freedom. Right here, nonetheless, that topic is a selected individual. In the end, although, Wang treats Payá the identical as she would an concept, as image somewhat than particular person: a lonesome determine rebelling in opposition to bigger programs, an archetype she may by no means resist. The optimistic ending of the movie can also be according to its bigger mission of inspiring arcs somewhat than particular person specifics. To paraphrase Payá’s father’s phrases and quote the movie’s title, she means that irrespective of how darkish the present actuality, night time isn’t everlasting.
Night time Is Not Everlasting will start streaming on Max on November 19.