“We think and dream together, our collaboration is synergistic”: Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman on Neptune Frost

Neptune Frost is the highly unique and original sci-fi musical from artistic collaborators and couple, American musician Saul Williams and writer-actor Anisia Uzeyman, in their directorial debut. Starting life as a stage show, the project evolved over ten years to become a film musical with an accompanying album MartyrLoserKing and a forthcoming graphic novel.

The part Kickstarter-funded project, endorsed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ezra Miller, follows gender-fluid protagonist Neptune (played by Elvis Ngabo then Cheryl Isheja), who escapes with a group of miners in Burundi to create a computer hacker organisation in order to overthrow “The Authority” – the regime that presides over them. Neptune subsequently develops a relationship with Matalusa (Burundian rapper Bertrand “Kaya Free” Ninteretse), the leader of the collective.

Taking on a deliberately lo-fi, punky, Afrofuturistc aesthetic, Williams and Uzeyman build a surrealist vision of a radical new world that defies binaries and upends exploitative structures, marked by fluorescent paint and reconstructed e-trash. Traditional drumming and electronic beats infuse the rhythm of the piece, which merges song, spoken word and striking visuals in a Rwanda-shot, genre-bending tale with a love story at its centre.

The Upcoming had the pleasure of speaking with Williams and Uzeyman, who told us about the ten-year journey to developing their film, the bold look and feel of the sci-fi musical and inverting the Western gaze on Africa and history to tell a story from the African perspective looking to the future. We also discussed the feature’s themes of technology as both an oppressor and potential liberator of people, gender as a fluid concept and the power of love to connect us, as well as their hope the movie will become the next queer cult classic in the vein of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Sarah Bradbury

Neptune Frost is released in select cinemas on 4^th November 2022. 

Read our review here.

Watch the trailer for Neptune Frost here: