Heart of Darkness (2025) plays Saturday Night at Animation First 2026

In a Brazil of the near future, where everyone is corrupt and drug gangs battle the police and military for control,  a “boy scout” of a lieutenant is set upriver to find a rogue officer named Kurtz who seems to have set up a cult of personality that is causing everyone problems.

This version of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is one of the best films I’ve seen over the last few years. A staggering piece of filmmaking it is possibly as good a telling of the tale as we have gotten so far (and yes that means this may be better than Apocalypse Now). Neat and compact, it is direct and to the point. The images perfectly set the mood and express all the emotion the that we don’t get from the minimal dialog.  We are in this other place and other time. We are traveling with these characters upriver.

Those who only know Conrad’s story from Coppola’s film and are looking for something similar are going to be disappointed. They will see a few echoes, but most of the cinematic set pieces we think of with that film are inventions for that film.  While it has been years since I read the original novella, this is the first time that I felt I was seeing something close to what Conrad had imagined, with the result that the film better echoes the world be life in.  In setting the film in a city not far from today director Rogerio Nunes has made a film that brings the actual heart of darkness closer to us and not in a jungle far away or in a country at war.

I was staggered by this film from the first few moments. Rarely has any film grabbed me by throat and forced me to go along.  This is particularly true of a film based on a classic novella and which has inspired various retellings. Rogerio Nunes‘s Heart of Darkness is such that made me reconsider every version of the tale all over again.

And this is not just for fans of animation. This is an adult tale that isn’t for kids. The use of animation is simply because this film could not have been made live action and had this effect. I say that because the manipulation of image and sound create a real world that fully connects to out psyches and make the tale something greater

One of the best films I’ve seen in 2026- this is a must see.