MARA’AKAME’S DREAM
El sueño del Mara’akame
Mexico, 2016 | 90 min
Wixárika and Spanish with English subtitles
Director: Federico Cecchetti

Saturday, Sept 2
7:15 PM | Goldcorp Centre for the Arts | SFU Woodward’s
*Free admission with VLAFF Membership

Nieri, a Wixárika youth, dreams of travelling to Mexico City in order to play a concert with his friends in their rock band. However his father, who is a Mara’akame (a shaman), has other desires for him. He is instructing him in the traditions of the Wixárika people, of the sacred nature of peyote and of how to find the Blue Deer, so that Nieri can learn to heal and become a Mara’akame like himself. Nieri must struggle between respect for his father’s wishes and his own desire to be on stage and hear the roar of the audience. He must find a way to decipher the troubling images within his dreams as they guide him down a path of self-awakening.

“Cecchetti’s unique films raise cultural understanding and social awareness by means of interweaving psychology, philosophy and poetry.” Franziska Esther Meierhofer, IndieWire

Nieri es un joven wixárika (huichol) cuyo sueño es viajar con su banda musical a tocar en un concierto en la gran Ciudad de México. Pero su padre, un Mara´akame (chamán wixárika), tiene otros planes para él: seguir la tradición de su pueblo y encontrar al Venado Azul en sus sueños, para así poder aprender a sanar y convertirse en un Mara’akame come él. Cuando Nieri viaja a la gran ciudad sus sueños le dirigen hacia un camino espiritual, mientras la realidad de la gran ciudad se mezcla con el misticismo de su cultura.

ADDITIONAL CREDITS
Producers: José Felipe Coria, Maria del Carmen de Lara
Writer: Federico Cecchetti
Cinematographer: Iván Hernández
Editors: Pierre Saint Martin, Raúl Zendejas
Cast: Luciano Bautista, Antonio Parra, Pascual Hernández,Cruz de la Cruz, Paly Omar Ezequiel, Inocencio de la Cruz Domínguez,Patricio Fernández, Mariana Treviño

Federico Cecchetti studied at CUEC UNAM and Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografìa. He is the director of 8 short Films, his first feature film as a director is Mara’akame`s Dream. In 2016 he developed his next film Letters from the Land of the Tarahumara in the Residence of the Cinefondation of Cannes Film Fest.

 

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