Casa de Lava

When asked "What's next?" Costa says he doesn't know. To the rescue comes Paulo Branco-he had produced films by Bartas, de Oliveira, Wenders and Monteiro, among others-suggesting that they do "something in Africa." Costa needs a volcano, and he finds one on Fogo, one of the Cape Verde islands in the former Portuguese colony. Underlying the film are feelings of uncertainty, disappointment with himself and discouragement stemming from the political and social situation in the country, as well as the idea of filming a remake of Jacques Tourneur's beloved I Walked with a Zombie (1943). In short, it's an escape. The main protagonist in Casa de Lava is a young nurse who is taking a "zombie" (Isaach De Bankolé)-a comatose Cape Verdean worker who fell from scaffolding in Lisbon-back to the island. Mariana (Inês de Medeiros) ends up with stuck his inert body, as there is no one to take him off her hands. All around her is the kind of emptiness one might expect to see in the wake of a plague. Nobody admits to knowing the man, as if all his relationships have been buried beneath a layer of dust. Before Mariana is able to find anything out, she will have to get off the main road and abandon her confidence and strength. But it is not the girl in the red dress that will trigger the real revolution.