‘To The West, In Zapata’ review: Life on the extremes in pandemic-era Cuba

Dir/scr: David Bim. Cuba/Spain. 2025. 75mins

The day by day wrestle to outlive and put meals on the desk is keenly felt in David BIM’s debut characteristic To The West, In Zapata. Bim’s observational documentary captures some extraordinary moments because it follows the intense challenges dealing with one Cuban household when the Covid-19 pandemic rages via their nation. Placing monochrome compositions improve a touching story that brims with humanity and will readily entice additional pageant curiosity following its world premiere within the Burning Lights competitors of Visions du Reel.

 A touching story that brims with humanity

Bim is director of the FICCLAB characteristic movie improvement programme on the Worldwide Movie Faculty Of Cuba. Covid-19 restrictions pressured him into changing into a one-man filmmaking unit for a primary characteristic that he has divided into two distinctive elements. The primary, entitled ‘Landi’, focuses on that eponymous determine. Opening pictures seize him strolling via jungle and swampland. A machete dangles at his waist and he carries the hefty burden of a lifeless crocodile on his again. We comply with each step of his lengthy stroll till mild breaks via the dense forest and we arrive at a clearing the place he has arrange camp.

A wind-up radio supplies information bulletins that set up the date as July 10, 2021 and supply some sense of the Cuban authorities’s response to the pandemic. Residing in isolation, the self-sufficient Landi seems to be in full concord together with his environment. He drinks from the swamp water, fells timber to create a steady pathway via the mud and has taken a small rodent as a pet. Bim focuses his digital camera on Landi’s lean, muscled torso and his gnarled, leathery options as he stares stoically into the space, drawing on a cigarette that seems to be his one luxurious. The sound design provides to the vivid environment. capturing hen calls, the hum and buzz of bugs and Landi’s squelchy progress via the swamp.

The attractive black-and-white cinematography calls to thoughts the work of David Gallego on Embrace Of The Serpent (2015). Bim exhibits an amazing eye for an evocative picture, not least as Landi lies slumbering in a coffin-like boat surrounded by water, lillies and reeds that implies a John Everett Millias portray. Bim follows as Landi pursues his dangerous enterprise in all weathers. Within the movie’s most spellbinding sequence, we watch him wading via the water making an attempt to snare one other crocodile because it thrashes and snaps. Landi appears impervious to the hazards that surrounds him, pushed solely by his want for meals.

Within the second half, entitled ‘Mercedes’, we perceive why this all issues a lot. In a sequence which parallels the movie’s opening pictures, Mercedes carries her personal burden within the form of disabled son Deinis, who requires 24-hour care. Mercedes is eagerly awaiting the return of Landi from his clandestine journey to the Zapata swamp, a biosphere reserve. He’s already two days late. His homecoming is bittersweet; a short interlude of togetherness earlier than he’ll return to the looking grounds. Mercedes is all too conscious of their unimaginable state of affairs, declaring that they’re extra prone to die of starvation than Covid-19.

Initially, To The West is a movie that withholds a great deal of info, inviting the viewer to return to it slightly than reaching out to seize the eye. The scenes of jungle life are mesmerising, as if we now have been granted the privilege of sharing the existence of a hermit. Once we realise what has been at stake, the movie warms and deepens. For one household on the margins of Cuban society, crocodile looking is actually a matter of life and loss of life. The irony comes from appreciating that the one approach they’ve of staying collectively is to endure the repeated stretches of separation.