Cabeza de Vaca

In 1528 Pánfilo de Narváez's expedition to Florida ends in disaster. One of the survivors is Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. He washes ashore, falls into the hands of the native people and is used at first as a slave. Over the next eight years he walks across the interior of the continent, learns languages, works as a healer and moves away from the people he came from. When he finally meets his own army again he is no longer one of them. The source is Naufragios, written by Cabeza de Vaca himself. Nicolás Echevarría shot the story not as an adventure of discovery but as a coming apart; the film is about a coloniser losing his own world. The cinematographer, Guillermo Navarro, later won an Oscar for Pan's Labyrinth. Juan Diego is in the lead. The production was in the official selection at the 1991 Berlinale and became Mexico's Oscar submission that year. The telling talks very little; the weight is in the walking, the sickness and the landscape.