The Other Conquest

1521, and Tenochtitlan has fallen. Topiltzin, a young scribe descended from Moctezuma, survives the massacre at the Templo Mayor alone, by hiding among the bodies. When he is caught he is baptised by force, renamed Tomás and shut into a monastery, where Friar Diego is convinced he has saved him. Salvador Carrasco tells the conquest from inside the defeated side rather than the Spanish one: the belief taken away by force matters here as much as the temple pulled down. When Topiltzin starts seeing his own goddess in a statue of the Virgin, both men end up somewhere neither recognises. Plácido Domingo's name is on the production, and it stands as one of the first major Mexican films made from this point of view.