499, the fourth feature film by director Rodrigo Reyes, has been announced winner of the Special Jury Prize in the international feature documentary competition at the Hot Docs International Documentary Festival, and winner of the Best Cinematography Award in the documentary competition at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it had its world premiere.
Acclaimed as “an epic, enchanting road movie that travels seamlessly through time” (Lauren Wissot, Filmmaker Magazine) and "as riveting as it is stunning… an ambitious and unflinching portrait of contemporary Mexico” (John Fink, The Film Stage), the film will be available to stream as part of the Hot Docs Festival Online, taking place May 28 - June 6, and accessible to Ontario residents via www.hotdocs.ca.
The year 2021 marks the 500-year anniversary of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. To commemorate the historical occasion, director Reyes offers a provocative hybrid-cinema experience to explore the brutal legacy of colonialism in contemporary Mexico.
Through the eyes of a ghostly conquistador (played by newcomer Eduardo San Juan Breña), Reyes recreates Hernán Cortez’s epic journey from the coasts of Veracruz to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, the site of contemporary Mexico City. As the anachronistic fictional character interacts with real victims and subjects of Mexico’s failed drug wars, the filmmaker portrays the country’s current humanitarian crisis as part of a vicious and unfinished colonial project, still in motion, nearly five-hundred years later.
Bold, unique, and strikingly cinematic, 499 mixes non-fictional and performative elements with components of a road movie to show how past traumas continue to affect contemporary reality. In so doing, director Reyes links seemingly disparate histories of violence, while confirming him as one of the potent voices in American independent cinema.
Watch the trailer:
