This is a little but very intelligent and sensitive movie, by a Spanish Canadian movie maker and film teacher, and a real surprise for all lovers of art cinema. It's about the personal quest of a strange character, a Canadian professor, expert on native culture, who leaves the teaching for selling Indian masks, but return to the university and begins a long travel in search of forgive and sense. He was raised for the natives in his childhood, and following the signs -mainly a raven who sees constantly flying over him- he must return to the woods to learn how to live according to his two cultures, and to pay his debts. But this is not melodrama. I'ts pure cinematic art, with not too much talking, impressive sound editing and beautiful and intriguing images. Intimate, slowly paced and fascinating, the first film of Lázaro Pacheco reminds me of Peter Weir, Herzog, Bergman and Nicolas Roeg. A beautiful and intriguing piece of magic realism, with a disturbing use of the native imaginary and myths, and with an open and bitter end, maybe not for all tastes.
