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“The Echo” — or rather, El Eco — is the name of a tiny rural village in Mexico’s Puebla state that sufficiently captivated Mexican-Salvadorean filmmaker Tatiana Huezo into filming it over the course of 18 months, observing its changes in weather, fortune and the temperament of its few, tightly bonded residents in fine, fraught degrees. But there’s more to the title of Huezo’s return to documentary filmmaking — following the major success of her 2021 fiction debut “Prayers for the Stolen” — than a mere marker of place: Examining the unique ties that bind farming families, where everyone’s welfare hangs on the same unkind elements, this exquisitely textured film observes how children’s lives echo those of their parents, repeating for generations on the same constantly inconstant land, until somebody breaks the pattern.

There’s something of an echo, too, between Huezo’s last film and this one, even as they nominally...

For the residents of El Eco, the rural hamlet that gives Tatiana Huezo’s new film its name, life and death are inseparable — not in an abstract sense, but in the here and now, the day-to-day. Animals must be herded and cared for and sometimes slaughtered, crops planted and harvested, and schoolchildren are often right on the frontline with their parents, watching, learning, doing. Taking it all in, they’re smart and inquisitive, kids at their most unself-conscious and open, and with Ernesto Pardo’s extraordinary camerawork holding them close, you might find it hard to let them go. You might wish that Huezo would perhaps return for a follow-up, a Mexico-set spin on Michael Apted’s indelible Seven Up films.

After delving into narrative for the first time with Prayers for the Stolen, the Mexican-Salvadoran filmmaker returns to her nonfiction roots with this intimately observed exploration of tough and tender realities.