Two Refusals (Would We Recognize Ourselves Unbroken?) (2024)
Suneil Sanzgiri
Two Refusals (Would We Recognize Ourselves Unbroken?), Suneil Sanzgiri, India/USA, S16mm > digital, 35 min, 2024
A woman’s dreams become haunted by a mythological titan from Portuguese mythology called the Adamastor—a giant storm cloud formed on the Cape of Good Hope who sought to destroy Vasco de Gama’s ship and prevent him from ever reaching India. Repurposed from Portugal’s oldest work of epic poetry, Os Lusíadas, the Adamastor becomes a figure of refusal, but also of failure, ultimately posing the question, “What could have been?”
Two Refusals (Would We Recognize Ourselves Unbroken?) is an experimental film focussing on interwoven narratives around the mutual struggle against Portuguese colonialism between India and Africa and the bonds of solidarity that developed between the two continents. Told through a mix of interviews and fictional narratives, Two Refusals utilizes a blend of CGI animation, Super 16mm film, hand-processed film, and destroyed archival film to uncover lost layers of world-building, kinship, and the material and immaterial network of relations that developed between historical figures in Goa, Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau.
Streaming Details
This film is available to stream globally.
Program Partners
This film is co-presented with Ecstatic Static.
Image credits: all artworks and stills courtesy of the artist © Suneil Sanzgiri. Portrait courtesy © Shala Miller.
About the artist
Suneil Sanzgiri (India/USA) is an artist, researcher, and filmmaker born in Dallas in 1989. His films, videos, essays, and installations investigate how systems of oppression are informed and reinforced by trauma, history, and memory, often contending with questions of identity, heritage, culture, and decolonization in South Asia. He received an MS in Art, Culture, and Technology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2017). After graduating Sanzgiri worked briefly as a journalist at NowThis, producing hundreds of videos covering topics including police brutality, racial justice, and Indigenous and Palestinian struggle. His recent films such as At Home but Not at Home (2019) and Letter from a Far-off Country (2020) have been exhibited widely at festivals, museums, galleries, and grassroots venues internationally, including The Block Museum, Asia Art Archives in America, Media City Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, IndieLisboa, New York Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Viennale, Onion City Film Festival, and Beijing International Short Film Festival. He is the recipient of Best International Film Award from Open City Documentary Festival, Best Experimental Film Award from BlackStar Film Festival, and a Special Jury Mention from European Media Arts Festival. He co-programmed Flaherty NYC (2020–2021) and was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film (2021). He was a MacDowell Colony Fellow and an artist-in-residence at Pioneer Works (2021). He lives and works in New York.