Through shard-like glimpses of everyday life in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, LANDFALL is a cautionary tale for our times. Set against the backdrop of protests that toppled the US colony’s governor in 2019, the film offers a prismatic portrait of collective trauma and resistance. While the devastation of María attracted a great deal of media coverage, the world has paid far less attention to the storm that preceded it: a 72-billion-dollar debt crisis crippling Puerto Rico well before the winds and waters hit. LANDFALL examines the kinship of these two storms — one environmental, the other economic — juxtaposing competing utopian visions of recovery. Featuring intimate encounters with Puerto Ricans as well as the newcomers flooding the island, LANDFALL reflects on a question of contemporary global relevance: when the world falls apart, who do we become?
Moveable Fest | Stephen Saito, editor and writer
“extraordinarily prescient… In Aldarondo’s extraordinary film, a crisis can bring out the worst in people, but also the best”
Filmmaker Magazine | Brett Story
“an exquisite film, by turns tender and compassionate, cinematically adventurous and self-assured”
Hollywood Reporter | Jordan Mintzer, writer and producer
“For those of us whose memory of Hurricane Maria boils down to footage of President Donald Trump scornfully tossing out paper towels to a crowd at a disaster relief center, Cecilia Aldarondo’s documentary Landfall offers up a welcome flipside”
Educational Media Reviews Online | Sara DeSantis, Reference and Research Librarian, University of South Carolina Upstate
“The documentary Landfall is a beautifully shot documentary depicting life in Puerto Rico in the two years between the destruction of Hurricane Maria in 2017 and when people took to the streets to remove Ricardo Rossello as Governor in 2019 [...] I recommend Landfall because of its amazing shots of life in Puerto Rico and the information that you get from all of the interviews.”
