ALAMAR

http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/content_display/reviews/specialty-releases/e3id62c14caef9dce167958c354746cf56e
Alamar begins with the Coliseum in Rome, and soon shifts to the interior of an old bus, the kind with latched windows and a transistor radio on the dash. This passage from the Old World to the New is accompanied by a soothing hum, and then the crunching of wheels on an unpaved road. Transported beyond Western constraints of architecture and technology, we are suddenly in the open air and sea of Mundo Maya, the dwelling place of Central America’s indigenous people. The journey is Natan’s (Natan Machado Palombini), a five-year-old boy who travels from his home in Rome ala mar (“to the sea”), and into the wilds of the Yucatán Peninsula. Through the child’s eyes, we experience a littoral paradise as an unpredictable place, one that only a father who knows the habits of untamed nature can gently transform into a lasting memory.