Ixcanul (, Kaqchikel for "volcano") is a 2015 Guatemalan drama film written and directed by Jayro Bustamante in his directorial debut. It was screened in the main competition section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Alfred Bauer Prize. The film was selected as the Guatemalan entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards but was not nominated. It is the first film produced in the Kaqchikel language of the Mayan family.Ixcanu, Roger Ebert website
Plot The film is set in a village on the flank of an active volcano, where Maria and her parents cultivate coffee. The Kaqchikel villagers, like other Mayans, practice a mixture of Catholicism and the traditional Maya religion, worshiping the Christian God while also making offerings to the goddess that they believe lives in the volcano. Maria has never been beyond the volcano and the village is her world. She has been promised to the plantation foreman, Ignacio, in marriage, but desires a younger plantation worker, who wants to emigrate to the United States. Pepe paints to Maria a picture of the US as a land of plenty and promise, a place where the people enjoy a level of affluence that is unthinkable in Guatemala. When she asks him if he would take her with him, he says he might if she has sex with him although he also says that it is a difficult journey, over a desert and rivers.
The plantation becomes overridden with venomous snakes, making it hazardous for Maria and her family to sow the fields. Ignacio goes to the city for a while, saying he will marry Maria upon his return. The virgin Maria becomes curious about sex, drinks the sap from a tree, and masturbates against the trunk. She seduces Pepe, who is drunk outside the makeshift bar that serves the coffee workers. After they start having intercourse he tells her that there is no danger of pregnancy the first time after she asks him not to come inside her but she becomes pregnant. Pepe agrees to take her to America after he has been paid for the harvest but, after finding his wages have been consumed by his drinks bill at the company owned bar, leaves without telling her and owing debts.
Maria's parents are furious when they learn she is pregnant, saying that Ignacio will have them evicted. Juana, Maria's mother, tries various folk remedies to induce an abortion, none of which work, leading her to the conclusion that the child is fated to be born. Maria argues that, if the snakes are driven away, a new crop of coffee will be planted which would require their labor, making it impossible for the landlord to evict them. Maria and Juana burn the field, but the snakes return. After Juana tells her that being pregnant endows her with a magical "light" that will chase away the snakes as her body becomes a metaphorical volcano, Maria sees a Mayan shaman who performs a ceremony to stoke the "light" inside of her. Juana tries to dissuade her, saying not all magic is real, but she tries anyway and, during her attempt to drive the snakes away by walking across the field, she is bitten and driven to the hospital in a nearby city.
At the hospital, the Spanish only-speaking staff do not understand Kaqchikel, making it impossible for Maria to understand what is said or the form she is asked to initial. She survives but is told by the nurse that her baby died and Maria and her family go home with a coffin. Maria, maddened with grief, exhumes the body because she wants to see her daughter despite being told it was deformed but finds the coffin only contains a brick and a blanket. Maria and her family return to the city to report the missing baby. However, the Spanish only-speaking police officers advise them not to file a complaint because they would be the primary suspects while Ignacio, translating, sabotages the meeting. The film ends with a resigned Maria being dressed as a traditional Mayan bride as she prepares to marry Ignacio.
Cast María Mercedes Coroy as Maria María Telón as Juana Marvin Coroy as El Pepe Manuel Manuel Antún as Manuel Justo Lorenzo as Ignacio
Production Ixcanul has a largely non-professional cast. In an interview, Jayro Bustamante, the film's Spanish-speaking director stated he wanted to shoot a film in Kaqchikel because of its low status in Guatemala, being seen as "the language of the Indians". Bustamante wrote the script for Ixcanul in French while studying at a film school in Paris, then translated it into Spanish upon his return to Guatemala, and finally had it translated into Kaqchikel. In Guatemala, street theater is an honorable and respected profession, and Bustamante recruited his cast from street theater veterans. Bustamante recalled that he put up a sign saying "casting", and no-one came; when he put up a sign the next day saying "employment opportunities", he was deluged with would-be actors.
Casting his actresses proved to be a major difficulty in the patriarchal society of Guatemala where machismo is the dominant value as most of the husbands of the street theater actresses proved unwilling to allow their wives to work in a film unsupervised. María Telón, a veteran street theater actress, was cast as Juana largely because as a widow she had no husband to answer to. The 19-year old María Mercedes Coroy, who had never acted before, needed her self-confidence built up to play Maria as Bustamante recalled her saying to him: "Do you remember when we first started rehearsing? I wouldn't open my legs 10 centimeters to do yoga. Then the next thing I know I'm naked in front of the entire country!" Bustamante stated he chose to focus on his female characters because: "In Guatemala, we ignore the strength of women. We throw it away". In another interview, Bustamante described the symbolic parallel between the volcano and Mayan women in Guatemala: "For me, Mayan women in Guatemala today are like that volcano that rumbles and resounds but hasn’t yet erupted. Real change will happen when these women erupt and release what they have inside." Bustamante commented that the film's subtitles did not convey the full richness of the dialogue, noting that in Kaqchikel the word ixcanul means not only volcano, but also "the internal force of the mountain which boils looking for eruption".
Cultural significance Ixcanul presents real-life issues in a slightly fictionalized manner. Its use of the Kaqchikel language accurately portrays Kaqchikel culture and the community's unique problems. Unlike other films in Indigenous languages, this film gives significant speaking roles to non-native actors. It features first-time actors from the communities near where it was filmed in Guatemala, which is an uncommon practice in film and media production. In an interview with Indiewire, Bustamante expressed that he was trying to illuminate a misrepresented culture. He then emphasizes that he acknowledges that if it were any other people, he would not have been able to do it. He stated that he felt comfortable enough to make a film because he grew up around Mayan people in Guatemala, so he felt an authentic connection. Bustamante grew up in the highlands of Guatemala and identified as mestizo, a term used to describe people of mixed race, specifically those of both European and Indigenous ancestry. Bustamante intended to make a film that genuinely honored the Mayan people without being exploitative or "looking at them as if they were in a zoo".
Ixcanul has been celebrated for its authentic portrayal of Mayan culture and for bringing attention to the experiences of indigenous peoples in Guatemala. The film has been well-received by both Mayan communities and scholars of indigenous studies. It has been shown at international film festivals. According to scholar K.C. Barrientos, the film incorporates Mayan circular cosmologies central to Mayan culture and worldview. The circular motifs in the film are meant to represent the cycles of life, death, rebirth, and the interconnectedness of all things.
Ixcanul has had a significant impact on the film industry and has brought attention to the underrepresented perspectives of indigenous peoples in cinema. Indigenous people have historically been portrayed in films as exotic, primitive, and backward, perpetuating colonialist stereotypes and erasing their diversity and complexity as distinct cultural groups. However, author Milton Fernando Gonzalez Rodriguez points out there has been a shift toward more nuanced and respectful portrayals of indigenous cultures and histories in Latin American cinema. He explores how indigenous filmmakers and actors are challenging dominant narratives and representations of indigenous peoples and using film as a tool for cultural affirmation, political activism, and social change.
Community reception Ixcanul has also received some critiques from scholars and critics. One major critique is that the film continues to reproduce negative stereotypes of indigenous people as being "primitive", which can be seen as exoticization despite Bustamante's efforts to avoid this. While the film attempts to subvert these ideas by showing the complexity of Mayan culture, some believe it ultimately reinforces them, along with the stereotype of indigenous women as passive and submissive and Mayan people as a whole as having a predisposition to alcohol abuse. Similarly, in their review of the film, the collective Oxlajuj Ajpop, a non-governmental organization focused on studying Kaqchikel (Maya) language and culture, notes that "Ixcanul continues a centuries-long tradition of representing the 'other' through an exoticizing and fetishizing lens."
Many people have criticized the movie Ixcanul for how it portrays indigenous people, which is a problem seen in other popular films, such as Mel Gibson's Apocalypto and Pocahontas by Walt Disney Animation Studios. These portrayals often show indigenous characters as ignorant, uneducated, and uncivilized, which reinforces harmful stereotypes and contributes to the continued marginalization and oppression of indigenous communities. Scholar Ariel Tumbaga points out that these types of narratives can have long-term effects and ignore the complexity of indigenous culture, reinforcing the idea of their inferiority.
Media reviews
Ed Frankel wrote in a laudatory review: "Guatemala's first-ever entry for the foreign language Oscar is an absorbing, beautifully-shot drama of cultural ritual and the drive of one young woman to escape a rudimentary social system." In a review in The Washington Post, Stephanie Merr wrote: "María Mercedes Coroy is riveting, especially as the story takes a turn for the tragic. Few actors convey so much with little more than a deadpan expression. Telón, as the outspoken, larger-than-life Juana, is her perfect counterbalance. Even when she's disappointed with María, she can't hide the profound love she feels for her only child... It all looks fascinatingly foreign to American eyes, but María's story — about rebellion and consequences, oppression and heartbreak — is anything but."
Alex Midgal wrote in The Globe & Mail: "Like its titular Guatemalan volcano, Jayro Bustamante's hypnotic film debut Ixcanul bubbles with the tension of a teenage girl at odds with her family's native customs, before erupting into a frantic and quietly devastating third act." Alisssa Wilkinson wrote in her review: "Shot luminously by Luis Armando Arteaga, each frame holds steady on its subject, inviting the audience to calmly observer the daily routines and customs of its subjects in saturated colors that seem almost to glow".