The Sleepwalking Land, based off the novel by Mozambican author Mia Couto, is set in the midst of the post-colonial civil war, telling the story of a young boy and an old man wandering through the war-torn countryside, eventually looking for the young boy’s family. The story runs parallel with a story-within-a-story of a young man who loses his village in the war but finds love, and where that love will take him.

It’s a beautiful movie, albeit with one scene that is so shockingly out of place it knocks you a bit off-kilter. However, as the movie progresses, magical realist elements take over, and leads to an ending that is neat, sad, but hopeful – though if you see the magical realism as a metaphor or a vision just in the heads of those hopelessly lost, doubly sad.