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Landfall

Directed by Cecilia Aldorando

United States | 2020 | 93 minutes | English, Spanish | Order No. W251327

An intimate and lyrical portrait of trauma, resilience, and resistance in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, LANDFALL exposes the island’s deepening economic and environmental crises and its fraught colonial relationship with the United States. An intimate and lyrical portrait of trauma, resilience, and resistance in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, LANDFALL exposes the island’s deepening economic and environmental crises and its fraught colonial relationship with the United States.

SYNOPSIS

Through shard-like glimpses of everyday life in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, LANDFALL (dir. Cecilia Aldarondo) traces collective trauma and resistance in the wake of the devastating storm and exposes the island’s fraught colonial relationship with the United States. The world measured the historic hurricane in wind speeds and flood levels. But when the grid collapsed and relief stalled, it became clear that María had struck an island already in crisis, plagued by years of recession and a spiraling public debt that crippled the economy. As federal aid faltered, a new wave of investors arrived, revealing how Puerto Rico’s crisis also created opportunity for those who might seek to exploit it. Cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and other investors, drawn to favorable tax policies, came in search of profit.

Shaped from within the communities it portrays, LANDFALL moves between intimate conversations and public protests, capturing confrontations that echo the island’s colonial past and its neocolonial present. Refusing both spectacle and sentimentality, LANDFALL centers the strength and solidarity of those rebuilding, revealing that catastrophe does not create crisis so much as expose the structures that sustain it. Through luminous and carefully composed images, the camera inverts a postcard perfect image of the island with its careful attention to place and people. Rather than reducing Puerto Rico to either ruin or paradise, it centers those navigating its present. In doing so, it asks a question that resonates far beyond Puerto Rico: when disaster strikes, who is protected, who profits, and who is left to rebuild?

PRESS

Extraordinarily prescient… In Aldarondo’s extraordinary film, a crisis can bring out the worst in people, but also the best.

Stephen Saito Moveable Fest

An exquisite film, by turns tender and compassionate, cinematically adventurous and self-assured.

Brett Story Filmmaker Magazine

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.

Jordan Mintzer Hollywood Reporter

Aldarondo presents a far more nuanced view of Puerto Rico in her award-winning documentary LANDFALL, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at DOC NYC’s Viewfinders competition.

Matthew Carey Deadline

LANDFALL doesn’t linger in despondence of the ability to endure. It is this multiplicity that allows LANDFALL to excel. Without presenting a straightforward narrative of recovery after María, it considers both the unprocessed grief and the send of relief that so many carry with them.

The film travels across the archipelago and diaspora, bearing witness to the Puerto Rican experience after the storm.

A timely and comprehensive portrait of an island unfairly battered by increasingly dangerous weather and corrupt bureaucracy. The film is a love letter that reaches beyond the headlines.

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

  • 2020 Viewfinders Grand Jury Award, DOC NYC Film Festival
  • Tribeca Film Festival, 2021
  • ACT Human Rights Film Festival, 2021
  • DOC NYC, 2020
  • IDFA, 2020

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Cecilia Aldarondo

Cecilia Aldarondo is an award-winning director, producer and writer from the Puerto Rican diaspora who works at the intersection of poetics and politics. She is known for her features MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART (2016), LANDFALL (2020), YOU WERE MY FIRST BOYFRIEND (2023), and DEAR MS: A REVOLUTION IN PRINT (2025). Her films have premiered at Tribeca and SXSW and broadcast on the award-winning PBS Series POV as well as HBO. Aldarondo has a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Minnesota, an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths College, an MA in Gender Studies from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and a BA in English from the University of Florida, and she teaches at Williams College. She is a member of the documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (02/25)

Credits

Director: Cecilia Aldarondo  

Producers: Cecilia Aldarondo, Ines Hofmann Kanna, Lale Namerrow Pastor, Ana Portnoy Brimmer 

Editor: Terra Jean Long 

Cinematographer: Pablo Alvarez Mesa 

Composer: Angélica Negrón 

Executive Produced by Laura Poitras, Charlotte Cook, Justine Nagan, Chris White, Sally Jo Fifer, Sandie Viquez Pedlow, Field of Vision, POV, ITVS, and Latino Public Broadcasting  

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