Jose Álvarez [delivers] a gorgeous and captivating overview of the crafts and rituals of the Totonac people in Veracruz’s Zapotal Santa Cruz community. Among the year’s loveliest nonfiction entries, this tapestry of sights and sounds allows audiences to take notice of a proud, long-ignored tribal group whose cultural roots remain firmly intact… Álvarez’s opening montage teases with glimpses of the community rising in the morning, establishing the film’s musical approach with a mesmerizing soundtrack composed by Martin Delgado (who also did the masterly sound design), Tomas Perez and Esteban Gonzalez… The filmmaker opts to concentrate on two areas of the community’s life: the elegant ceramics produced by a cadre of skilled women, led by Hermelinda Santes, and the religious rite of voladores, led by maestro Esteban Gonzalez. In the latter practice, men climb a pole topped by a cross-shaped pulley holding four long, thick ropes, to which they attach themselves by the feet and from which they hang upside down as they’re precipitously dropped… There’s no effort to explain the activities, no historical background or informational footnoting. The process of filming is evident in the viewing, which is part of the documentary’s deeper purpose: The handicraft and dedication exemplified in the ceramics and voladores are precisely what’s demanded of filmmaking itself, just as the beautiful results of the Totonacs’ work and the film’s own beauty are for their own sake.—Robert Koehler, Variety
