Purely Joyful Movie!

Please don't spend money on this.

Absolutely brilliant

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

I rarely cannot finish watching a movie, but finally gave up on this one with just 30 minutes left. The dubbing was dreadful, which had a negative impact on the acting performances, but the characters and narrative lacked depth and appealed to stereotypical typecasting of white males, particularly the lead character Killian, as victims of circumstance rather than perpetrators of evil in the history of colonialism; black women were portrayed as beautiful, oversexed seducers and black men mostly as stupid and violent. Rather than shedding light on the real history of Portuguese occupation of Guinea, it perpetrated stereotypes, including white women craving sex from dangerous, muscled, well-endowed black men. The main reason I watched the movie for as long as I did was the exceptional cinematography, which was breathtaking.

I have watched many and many movies and not every movie can actually leave a big influence on me. This one did it. "Palm trees in the snow" (or as I prefer in Spanish "Palmeras en la nieve") is very deep, sad, interesting too. You have to concentrate a lot to understand everything you need to. The biggest shock for my brain was when the movie ended and 10 minutes later I just started crying and couldn't stop. It has many historical things happening besides the actual movie plot. It made me think about lives of those people in Africa, second half of the 20th century. I am quite sure it will make you too. Brought to life by phenomenal actors, it will leave a mark in your head, I know it. Highly recommending it to you.

Cringeworthy from beginning to end. Overly sexualized black bodies. The movie is all about the seductive, primal power the black women's bodies had over the white men. The black roles barely had any depth or character development. The black women are depicted as facile and oversexed. The black men are overly docile, stupidly superstitious, crazy-eyed angry and savagely violent. Colonialism (which is essentially theft) is presented as a family business, not the systematic destruction of a country and its people. No one apologizes for it or reflects on it. The white characters are presented as fellow victims of circumstances, not willing participants in evil. The narrative: Killian abandoned the civilized world to save her; the lighter-skinned (clearly mixed-race), and relatively chaste savage. Their love could only exist in a lawless, uncivilized underworld created by the bloodthirsty slave rebels. A tragic, cautionary tale. This is the same reinforced culturally separatist narrative routinely found in Spanish (and Portuguese) movies. It's sad that these ill-considered movies are still being released in 2015. Thanks to the ongoing civil rights movement here in the U.S., modern filmmakers can't get away with this reckless narrative anymore. Cinematography was beautiful, though.

The tells the story of Kilian (Mario Casas); a young white worker that on 1958 arrives to Equatorial Guinea with his older brother to work (as a white manager) on a cacao plantation; and fell in love with a local native (not acceptable by the natives and due to the political turmoil become something forbidden). In the present time; Kilian's niece decides to visit the place to find out information about her family history; so the tale become structured as a mix of flashbacks.If the intention was criticism on Spanish colonialism; the movie limits the attack to a few bad seeds on both sides and the obvious cruelty (locals were paid but punished like slaves) is mostly diluted. In fact the portrait of the liberated Equatorial Guinea is far more depressing and cruel than the old one. The movie seems to say "you left us and see what you got into".While the technical aspects of the movie are excellent (camera work, FX, action and/or violent scenes, sound effects), the editing somewhat confusing. If you do not pay attention to some names you will get lost in many characters relations.There are also a few unnecessary scenes that make the movie lag.The acting department is reasonable but on the white side; nobody really shines. On the native (black) side, performances are stronger and passionate even when characters do not have a lot of development.As many European productions; there are some violent and plenty of nudity and (moderated) sex scenes. In Spain the movie was consider PG but like most of Europe; but I am pretty sure it will get an R in USA.In brief; it is an interesting (but not perfect ) movie worth a look