Sine die

In 1966, a U.S. B-52 bomber and a tanker plane crashed into each other over the village of Palomares in southern Spain. The plutonium in the bombs carried by the B-52 was spread over a wide area, and today it still lies buried 20 feet underground, surrounded by desert landscapes and fenced enclosures. This has major health implications for the local people, including filmmaker Camila Moreiras. The Spanish landscape and Moreiras’s body come together in parallel stories of recovery and survival—land and body alike must adapt, whatever the cost.

This short film is dedicated to the people for whom an emergency has continued for so long that it has become a domesticated state of being, and to a country and the people whose court case has been adjourned sine die, meaning “without assigning a day for a further meeting or hearing.” Shot on Kodak celluloid, Sine Die is aesthetically striking, showing visible grain in high-contrast black-and-white, and a distinctive, surefooted use of sound design and music.