In Savanna and the Mountain, the real villagers of Covas do Barroso in Northern Portugal do battle with Savannah Resources, a real British company looking to turn large areas of their UNESCO-protected region into Europe’s largest lithium mine. As moral showdowns go, it’s an easy one to get behind, certainly enough to warrant director Paulo Carneiro presenting his film and their story like a fable: casting locals to play themselves in scripted scenes, and framing the struggle like a pastiche of ’70s Westerns. Not everything clicks, but that relatively novel approach, the urgency of the situation––this conflict began as recently as 2019 and is still ongoing––and Carneiro’s connection to the region build enough goodwill to forgive a few shortcomings.
One particular sticking point is how it allows the viewer to not feel especially complicit. That the laptop I’m typing this on and the phone in my pocket both depend on that same resource is surely not lost on the director, but it’s not a debate on which the film is looking to participate. Carneiro is more interested in the paradox presented in our efforts to move away from fossil fuels by pillaging other resources, regardless of the communities that might be effected. That sticky subject is the first discussion we hear in Savanna, prompted by leaflets that the company leaves in the villagers’ postboxes (one reads that all cars sold in the EU by 2035 must be electric or use an alternative fuel source). The community members are shown quickly tallying the pros and cons before deciding to resist. This clear-eyed viewpoint is suggested as early as the opening shots, in which an iris wipe reveals the eponymous mountain, a lone villager, and a notably nervous horse. The sequence is punctuated by some big, Sergio Leone-style credits (big and yellow, like a ransom note) and an original protest song by a local musician, Carlos Libo. Would a little more subtlety have hurt? Perhaps not, but certain times do call for certain measures.
In any case: characters begin to emerge and a loose plot starts to take shape as the seasons pass. A young girl brings the company’s workers a peace offering. Youths on motorbikes are seen prowling the town. After opting to take collective action, some villagers start to cook up plans to slow the company’s progress, even going so far as to abduct their workers. These sequences, some of which veer towards slapstick, don’t always gel with the film’s overarching tone, leaving a sense of unevenness that makes the 77 minutes feel a bit longer than they should. The film ultimately succeeds thanks to the strength of its mise-en-scène, some endearingly flat line deliveries from the non-professional actors, as well as some gorgeous work from DP Duarte Domingos. In the moments when it all comes together, Savanna and the Mountain achieves the elusiveness of a folk tale.
Savanna premiered earlier this year in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes and screened again at Laceno D’Oro in Avellino, where the jury awarded it a “special mention” (essentially the festival’s second-place prize). Seeing it there, in a town nestled amidst the mountains outside Naples, I couldn’t help being reminded of the films of Alice Rohrwacher, as well as Matteo Zoppis and Alessio Rigo de Righi’s The Tale of King Crab––filmmakers of aesthetically and politically similar sensibilities to Carneiro, and artists renowned for the kind of magical realism and rural wonder to which this film aspires. Savanna can’t claim to be on that level, but it is often a beautiful film, not least when Carneiro pulls back and allows the landscape to take over. It’s in those moments that Savanna really makes its point, watching from above as locals navigate their way through the same narrow pathways their families have walked for generations––the gradualness of that process a stark antithesis to the bluntness of what may come.
Savanna and the Mountain played at the Laceno d’Oro International Film Festival.