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499

Year 2020
Runtime 87 mins
Language Spanish
Subtitles English Subtitles
Availability
  • Online & In-Cinema

The year 2021 marks the 500-year anniversary of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico. To commemorate the historical occasion, director Rodrigo Reyes offers a bold, hybrid cinema experience, mixing non-fictional and performative elements with components of a road movie.

Through the eyes of a ghostly conquistador, 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 brutal and unfinished colonial project, still in motion, 499 years later.

Countries

Mexico United States
Festivals
Tribeca Film Festival 2020, Hot Docs Film Festival 2020
Director
Rodrigo Reyes
Executive Producer
Steve Holmgren, Carter Logan
Producer
Inti Cordera, Andrew Houchens
Screenwriter
Rodrigo Reyes, Lorena Padilla
Cinematographer
Alejandro Mejía
Editor
Andrea Chignoli, Daniel Chávez Ontiveros
Music
Pablo Mondragón
Cast
Eduardo San Juan Breña