Concerned with the fragmented memories of my childhood during the civil war in Mozambique, I return to my grandmother’s village to reveal the untold stories. My grand-mother has Alzheimer’s, and her memories are fading. In the same village lives a former rebel. Perpetrator and victim, day and night, truth and fiction merge. As my generation is facing new tensions, the ghosts of the war are tireless and wait in the darkness.

Dir. Inadelso Cossa | 94min | 2024 | Mozambique

"The film wavers between real and imagined truths, a liminal state echoed by the evocative cinematography. Nocturnal sequences, in which wooden sheds, grassy fields, and even Cossa’s grandmother, are wrapped in a cloak of darkness inspire a deceptive sense of calm" - Guardian

"A hypnotic film debut from Mozambique, where a young director visits his grandmother's village to measure the depths of her memories. Each moment is staged as a drama in itself in a dark and disquieting piece of cinema." - CPH:DOX

"A lot of the time, we talk about forgetting as a form of letting go, but in Inadelso Cossa’s sophomore docu-fiction feature, forgetting is a haunting, undead, presence" - Eye for Film

"The film evolves into a sensory voyage, where the audience is invited to listen closely and experience the smell of gunpowder, the touch of long-suppressed emotions" - The Film Verdict

"Punctuating the film with simple, beautifully composed inserts of old family pictures placed among the greenery, Cossa recreates for the viewer the terrible feeling of forever being haunted by those who are not just gone, but who should be here today" - Cineuropa

"The echoes of horror are omnipresent. Against the backdrop of Mozambique’s now taboo civil war history, The Nights Still Smell of Gunpowder develops a sensory approach to ghosts, to missing and fictitious memories" - Berlinale