Set in remote swamplands, To the West, in Zapata portrays Landi’s dangerous hunts and Mercedes’s quiet care for their autistic son, an elemental portrait of resilience, love, and the cycles that bind them. In the first, starkly beautiful half, we follow Landi, weathered, solitary, navigating the treacherous swamps of Zapata with nothing but a machete, a rope, and unspoken resolve. The monochrome visuals and immersive sound, buzzing insects, marsh water, crackling radio reports, draw us into a world where each movement, each breath, distills danger and ritual. The second half shifts to Mercedes, gracefully burdened by caregiving for their autistic son amid absence and scarcity. When Landi finally returns, his weight of sustenance contrasts with the emotional weight their daily separation has etched into their lives.
Across festivals, critics celebrated the film’s visceral intimacy and formal boldness: its cinematography acts like allegorical chiaroscuro; its silence says more than speech. Awarded both the Special Jury and FIPRESCI prizes at Visions du Réel, the film conjures a mythic quality in its two halves, a mirrored existence where absence and reunion, wilderness and hearth, coalesce into a meditation on sacrifice, tenderness, and the rhythms that sustain, even when hope is relentless.
