Down on Earth

Down on Earth (1995) follows Mariana (Inês de Medeiros), a nurse working abroad at Fogo Island, in Cape Verde. From the close-ups to the wide shots, Pedro Costa seems to include cinematographic references that remind us of Roberto Rossellini’s Stromboli (1950) or Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked With a Zombie (1943). The letters that the inhabitants of Cape Verde gave to Pedro Costa while on location, asking him to deliver them to their families, inspired the filmmaker to make the following films, set at the Fontaínhas neighborhood – a trilogy known as the Letters from Fontaínhas.