new wave films
The Echo (online & DVD)
A film by Tatiana Huezo
Synopsis
In The Eco, a remote village in northern Mexico, life consists of the most elementary, basic things. Being a child/teen of labouring farmers here is an intense experience from day one, involving nature, animals and people. But also love, intimacy, illness and death. And education – at least for the younger generation.
Tatiana Huezo has made a name for herself as a sensitive and poetic documentarian and filmmaker Tempestad, Forum, 2016, Prayers for the Stolen and several shorts.
Accompanying three families in her new work, the notion of meandering becomes an informing principle as she brilliantly weaves a host of faces and gestures into a kaleidoscope of unpretentiousness. Subtly, she portrays the care-working matriarchy in a country notorious for its innumerable kidnappings of young women and girls.
A tender film that celebrates the grace of all animals and the children of this earth alike.
BBFC cert 12A
Trailer
Director — Tatiana Huezo
Mexican-Salvadoran filmmaker Tatiana Huezo gained an international reputation with her feature debut, The Tiniest Place (2011), which screened at more than 80 international festivals.
Her work has been widely recognized around the world and acknowledged by the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences with eight Ariel Awards; among them Best Documentary and Best Director for Tempestad, which premiered in the 66th Berlinale Forum; as well as Best Film for Prayers for the Stolen, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received a special mention from the jury.
Tempestad and Prayers for the Stolen were both selected by the Mexican Academy to represent Mexico in the Academy Awards and the Goya Awards.
Her previous film, Prayers for the Stolen, had a successful festival run and was nominated for the 37th Annual Film Independent Spirit Awards as well as the DGA Awards in the category of Best Director. It was also shortlisted for Best International Feature Film at the ‘Academy Awards’ in 2021.
Tatiana graduated from the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC) and has a Master’s Degree in ‘Creative Documentary’ from the Universidad Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.
She has given conferences and has taught classes around the world.
Her academic activities also include editing the book El Viaje, rutas y caminos andados para llegar a otro planeta produced by the CCC and Documenta Madrid.
Filmography
1997 CAUSTIC TIME (Tiempo caustico) Short Fiction
2001 THE CORE OF THE EARTH (El ombligo del mundo) Short Fiction
2005 FAMILY PORTRAIT (Retrato de Familia) Short Documentary
2011 THE TINIEST PLACE (El lugar más pequeño) Documentary - Mar del Plata International Film Festival – FIPRESCI award, AMACC Ariel Award ‘Best Documentary Feature’
2015 THE EMPTY CLASSROOM (El aula vacía) Fiction (Multiple Directors) - UNICEF Childhood and Adolescence Award – ‘Best Film’
2015 ABSENCES (Ausencias) Documentary Short– AMACC Ariel Award – ‘Best Short’
2016 TEMPESTAD Documentary - Berlin Film Festival - Forum, Sheffield International Documentary Festival – ‘Tim Hetherington Award’, ‘AMACC Silver Ariel Award’, ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Feature Documentary’, ‘Best Director’
2021 PRAYERS FOR THE STOLEN Fiction (Noche de Fuego) Feature – Cannes Film Festival – Un Certain Regard, ‘Special Mention’, San Sebastián Film Festival – ‘Horizons’ Award
2023 THE ECHO (El Eco) Docufiction – Berlin Film Festival Encounters – ‘Berlinale Documentary Award, ‘Best Director’ Award
Cast & Credits
| Cast: | ||
| Montse | Montserrat Hernández Hernández | |
| Luz Ma | Luz Maria Vázques González | |
| Sarahí | Sarahí Rojas Hernández | |
| Abuela Angeles | María de los Ángeles Pacheco Tapia | |
| Crew: | ||
| Director | Tatiana Huezo | |
| Writer | Tatiana Huezo | |
| Director of Photography | Ernesto Pardo | |
| Sound Recordist | Martin de Torcy | |
| Post Production | Marco Hernández Calvo | |
| Editors | Lucrecia Gutiérrez (AMEE), Tatiana Huezo | |
| Composers | Leonardo Heiblum, Jacobo Lieberman | |
| Sound Design | Lena Esquenazi | |
| Sound Mix | Jaime Baksh (CAS), Michelle Couttolenc (CAS) | |
| Postproduction | Marco Hernández Calvo | |
| Co-producers | Viola Fügen, Michael Weber, Doris Hepp | |
| Executive Producer | Maya Scherr-Wilson | |
| Producers | Tatiana Huezo, Dalia Reyes | |
| Production Company | Radiola Films | |
| Co Production Companies | The Match Factory, ZDF Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen | |
| With the Support of: | Insituto Mexicano de Cinematografia | |
| (through the Focine programme) | ||
| ZDF/arte, Film und Medienstiftung NRW | ||
| IDFA Bertha Fund, Chicken & Egg Pictures | ||
| Mexico/Germany 2023 102 mins | ||
| 1.89:1 DCP 4K / 5.1 |
The Critics
★★★★
Six Films To Watch This Week...
"A bold and heady Mexican documentary made with the panache of fiction...Feels like the purest naturalism, but it has a twist."
Danny Leigh, THE FINANCIAL TIMES
★★★★
'This insightful, immersive documentary...explores gender roles and thwarted dreams in the village.'
Wendy Ide, THE OBSERVER
★★★★
"The Echo contains a heightened and guided reality...A distinctive, perhaps unique kind of intuitive, immersive film - making...this - fascinatingly - is documentary with the look of fiction."
Peter Bradshaw, THE GUARDIAN
"...darkly rich natural imagery and crystalline sound combine to create a poetically forceful impression of the small Mexican village that gives the film its name. While Huezo shows us a profoundly holistic view of what it means to be alive and of the struggle to subsist on the land, perhaps what she most powerfully conveys is the difference between natural phenomena and limitations that are patriarchally constructed and imposed on the women, young and old."
Chris Shields, SIGHT & SOUND
★★★★
"Documentaries are intended to capture life in its purest form. With The Echo Huezo excels at depicting the nuances of a small Mexican community so well that this film could be viewed as an equally compelling drama. Captured with subtle grace and beauty, the filmmaker weaves various incidental moments together to create an insightful examination of themes of growing up, sexism, family, death and nature.
Andrew Murray, THE UPCOMING
★★★★1/2
"Set in a tiny village in the Mexican highlands, Tatiana Huezo's The Echo is a mesmerising mosaic of a group of children growing up in front of our very eyes on their journey to adulthood...an astonishing experience.
It is invigorating cinema...enthralling moments of fantasy into the grounded reality. Considering the subject matter, there is inevitably a more playful tone than with Huezo's previous films...utterly delightful."
William Stotter, LOUD AND CLEAR
"It's measured and mesmerising, with a real feel for the land, climate and people."
Jamie Graham, TOTAL FILM
★★★★★
"It's rare that a documentary grips so hard...The cinematography by Huezo's frequent collaborator, Ernesto Pardo, deserves special praise as each scene is so achingly beautiful, the film becomes a collective work of masterful artistry."
Camila E. Sotomayor, MOVIES1
"A powerful experience...you feel you are in the course of the work.'
KERMODE AND MAYO'S TAKE
"This exquisitely textured film observes how children's lives echo those of their parents, repeating generations on the same constantly inconstant land, until somebody breaks the pattern.
A finely textured, poetic view of Mexican childhood, a rural family portrait, though viewers could easily mistake it for fiction."
Guy Lodge, VARIETY
★★★★
'Film of the Week'
"A fascinating look into the harsh yet rewarding life there as seen through the eyes of its children.
Maria Duarte, THE MORNING STAR
★★★★
"A beautiful observed scenes of childhood...cameraman Ernesto Pardo"s shots of landcapes and eather are glorious."
Sarah Kent, THE ARTS DESK
★★★★
"It's measured and mesmerising with a real feel for the land, climate and people.'
Jamie Graham, TIME OUT
"A document of rural life and feminist solidarity, a watchful and elegiac study of how traditions, good and bad, reverberate down the years, or are lost to modernity. Ernesto Pardo's cinematography ranges from gorgeous renderings of the rural environs to Dutch Masters-style interiors."
Andrew Murray, THE CRACK
"A melancholically lush and intricately humanist portrait.
..the earthy splendor that Huezo's superb ability to see beyond the surface of human behavior and into its meaning conjures up....another striking, multigenerational story of women and nature...
From one scene to the next, like paint strokes slowly giving shape to an idea on canvas, one can draw thematic parallels between the individual stories...exhibits superb fluidity."
Carlos Aguilar, THE PLAYLIST
"Tatiana Huezo returns to her first cinematographic love in this moving and beautifully photographed documentary about teenagers in a Puebla community."
Lucy Virgen, THE FILM VERDICT
★★★★
"The children who Huezo focuses on are delightful - clever. funny and stoic, and as part of the village's manual democracy as anyone else. They are deftly captured by Ernesto Pardo's sumptuous cinematography... A languid and poetic representation of an unsung society."
Bejamin Poole, THE MOVIE WAFFLER
"Rural kids are the captivating heart of Tatiana Huezo’s intimate doc... with a portrait of a remote Mexican village.
Intimately observed exploration of tough and tender realities. The Echo focuses on three families, three generations of females in particular... The action flows with the rhythms of play and labor, joy and grief, thanks to sensitive editing... School children 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."
Sheri Linden, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
"Fascinating and strikingly photographed account of life in rural Mexico...
An intimate, immersive portrait of a way of life – its rhythms, hardships and its communal joys – told through the eyes of the young people who rarely question it.
There’s a tenderness and sensitivity to the filmmaking... The work of cinematographer Ernesto Pardo (who also shot Tempestad, as well as Ai Wei Wei’s documentary Vivos) is outstanding: his deft, curious lens captures the children’s engagement with and exploration of the world around them. Huezo’s use of sound is urgent and emphatic – before we get to see anything at all, she creates a three-dimensional soundscape that hints at the perils of this beautiful, savage corner of the natural world."
Wendy Ide, SCREEN
"Tatiana Huezo's award-winning feature-length documentary, is masterful. The film sensitively and poetically presents a year in the life of the rural Mexican communicty of El Eco in just 102 minutes, telling its inhabitants' stories from within the community...painstakingly crafted."
Sofia Serbin de Skalon, SOUNDS and COLOURS
"There is an expansive treatment of landscape in The Echo that often evokes Terrence Malick, with children running through the high grass as the soundtrack swells and Huezo races close behind them in a follow-shot. But in its exploration of life in rural Mexico where older ways of life often clash with individual desires, The Echo bears traces of Carlos Reygadas' influence. Much like his films, this one lionizes neither modernity nor tradition, instead emphasizing the personal toll on those who cannot seem to find their place in the community that produced them."
...the result is a relentlessly beautiful film...
Michael Sicinski, 'Featured Film' IN REVIEW ONLINE
Tatiana Huezo has returned to documentary filmmaking...Her new film is so precisely shot and narratively taut that it convincingly passes as a fictional drama. It's children, to whom Huezo devotes the most screen time, are shown helping their parents with household chores and attending school, but it's the scenes in which they frolic around El Eco and discuss their futures that are the most captivating. From their perspective, the vastness of their surroundings feels more cinematic than it ever could via someone taller or older.
Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer, REVERSE SHOT
"True to its title, The Echo is about the background, about leftovers, and things left unsaid and never done. It could literally refer to echoes of parenting or growing up, but there is much more than that. In this remote Mexican village, myths are still alive, and it’s not just animals but also plants that have souls. It is a beautiful film that manages to be simultaneously restrained and immersive, poetic and earthy."
Vladan Petkovic, CINEUROPA
Links
Trailer on YouTube - link or embed
Download trailer mp4 in 1920x1080 and in 1080x720 (for X/Twitter)
Download 6 social media clips mp4
Read Interview with Tatiana Huezo in Loud and Clear
Quad UK poster jpg
Download photo set (tif)
Download photo set (jpg)
Interview in Senses of Cinema with Tatiana Huezo and Ernesto Pardo
Directors Interviews in Filmmaker Magazine read Tatiana Huezo discussing her fifth feature The Echo
Read an Interview with Tatiana Huezo in Eye for Film
Watch an Interview conducted in English by The Upcoming with Tatiana Huezo responding in Spanish (turn on auto-subtitles in settings for English translation).
Bookings & Press
For film bookings please contact Colin Burch at Verve Pictures — [email protected]. Press resources are on the Press page.