Film: Zafari

This film is part of the 2026 Latin American Film Festival. In addition to the in-person screening, the film will be available to watch on the festival's virtual platform for one week afterward.

Trailer: Zafari 

 SYPNOSIS

Spanish with English subtitles

With Claret Quea, Daniela Ramírez, Francisco Denis, Samantha Castillo

Directed by acclaimed Venezuelan filmmaker Mariana Rondón, Zafari is a bold and unsettling exploration of social fracture, power, and survival in contemporary Latin America. Celebrated at major international film festivals, the film marks Rondón’s return to politically charged storytelling following her Golden Shell–winning Bad Hair (Pelo Malo) at the San Sebastián Film Festival. Blending social realism with fable and allegory, Zafari offers a stark portrait of life amid systemic collapse.

Set around a small, depopulated urban zoo, the arrival of the hippopotamus Zafari is a moment of shared fascination for neighbors from opposing social classes. From the windows of their once-luxurious but now decaying high-rise, Ana, Edgar, and their son Bruno observe the spectacle from a distance, mirroring their growing isolation. As shortages of food, water, and electricity intensify, the family is forced to confront increasingly dire choices: scavenge for survival or abandon their home altogether. Ana’s nocturnal searches through abandoned apartments—punctuated by unsettling sounds and darkened corridors—render domestic space a site of fear and moral uncertainty.

Through this claustrophobic microcosm, Rondón constructs a powerful political allegory of inequality, hunger, and forced displacement. In a world where human beings starve, the well-fed hippopotamus emerges as a disturbing symbol of distorted abundance. Zafari offers rich material for the exploration of Latin American cinema, political allegory, migration studies, and the cinematic representation of social crisis in post-collapse societies.

 

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