TTo the West in Zapata by David Beltrán i Marí is a contemplative, COVID-era work set against the remote backdrop of Cuba’s Zapata Swamp. It follows a crocodile hunter named Landi and his wife, Mercedes, who remains at home caring for their autistic son while Landi spends long stretches deep in the wetlands. Beltrán i Marí explores isolation, survival, and the rhythms of domestic and environmental life shaped by absence and routine.
Original Title: Al oeste, en Zapata
Directed by: David Beltrán i Marí
Year: 2025
Country: Cuba, Spain
Length: 74 minutes
The film unfolds in two distinct parts. The first follows Landi alone in the swamp, tracing his solitary navigation of nature’s density and danger. These sequences are patient, wordless, and rooted in physical tasks like fighting crocodiles, Landi finding his way in the jungle, and steering. There is a spiritual quality to his detachment, but also a persistent focus on survival. The second half shifts to Mercedes, who waits for Landi’s return while managing the demands of parenting and maintaining the household. Her scenes are quieter still, marked by repetition and deferred connection. The film’s bifurcated structure emphasizes the emotional distance between them, showing how each endures a separate kind of solitude: his shaped by elemental wilderness, hers by domestic stasis and longing.
Beltrán i Marí lets these routines play out in real time. Landi prepares his boat with practiced ease, Mercedes tidies their modest home, tends to her son, and glances outside. Dialogue is minimal, and emotional depth is conveyed through gestures, silences, and physical labor. The distance between them becomes more pronounced with each cycle of departure and return.
The challenges the family faces are framed as ongoing conditions. Economic uncertainty, the difficulty of caring for a child with specific needs, and the exhaustion of emotional perseverance form the core of the film. Beltrán i Marí observes these with restraint, never collapsing them into easy metaphor or melodrama.
The film’s slow rhythm mirrors the passing of time within the family’s separate spheres. Landi and Mercedes live parallel lives connected only by brief intersections. The landscape, the house, and the silences all begin to echo one another, showing two distinct yet similar portrayals of survival through repetition, patience, and care.
To the West in Zapata offers a subtle, absorbing portrait of a family suspended between presence and absence. It asks the viewer to sit with the weight of their routines, the distances that shape their love, and the understated ways people endure in a fractured world. Beltrán i Marí creates study in waiting, watching, and the labor of care stretched across distance.
To the West, in Zapata premiered at Visions du Réel 2025 as part of the festival’s Burning Lights Competition selection.
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