Free Screening of “The Awakening of the Ants” at 6:00 pm on Monday, April 25^th on the FMS Soundstage (SUM 125)!

The Awakening of the Ants ("El despertar de las hormigas") is a 2019 Costa Rican drama film directed by Antonella Sudasassi. It was selected as the Costa Rican entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards. For thoughtful, demure young housewife Isa, life in a lush, postcard-perfect Costa Rican seaside village is far from anyone’s idea of a dream. She is being pressured by her intrusive and loudly opinionated in-laws to have another baby – a boy – even as her already cramped household struggles to stay afloat. She tends to the needs of her husband and two daughters while her own desires remain distant and ignored. Isa finds herself suffocated by rigid gender roles and the cloistered, provincial thinking that comes with small-town life. Desperately imagining some other way of living—single, childless, desired—while growing increasingly tense towards those closest to her, Isa finds herself at a breaking point awakening to the possibilities of a life lived on her own terms, in this engrossing and intimate feature debut from writer/director Antonella Sudasassi Furniss.

Please join us for a Q&A with the director via Zoom after the screening. All are welcome!