Love is an act of radical defiance in David Bim’s lyrical debut.
“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
The Myth of Sisyphus (Albert Camus, 1942).
In his landmark essay, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), philosopher Albert Camus paints Sisyphus as the absurd hero. Condemned by the gods to perform the repetitive act of rolling a boulder up a hill for all eternity, Sisyphus is reimagined by Camus as a rebel. By embracing futility rather than succumbing to his fate, Sisyphus chooses hope over despair, life over death.
Camus’ essay is a helpful comparative text when viewing David Bim’s lyrical debut, To the West, in Zapata (Al oeste, en Zapata, 2025). Nearly eight years in the making and shot mostly during the pandemic, Bim’s moving portrait of a family living on the margins near the Zapata Swamp, a Cuban marshland reserve, was the sole documentary feature in the International Competition lineup at the 31st Kolkata International Film Festival.
Through long takes and evocative black-and-white cinematography, Bim creates a sense of immediacy and a cyclical rhythm that transports the viewer into the lives of Landi and Mercedes, a couple battling extreme odds to care for their son, Deinis. Landi is away crocodile hunting in a protected area for weeks on end to provide for his family. Mercedes looks after Deinis in Landi’s absence.
The family is united briefly before Landi departs again. And the cycle repeats. This cycle has a Sisyphean quality: Landi and Mercedes’ time apart in unforgivable conditions is akin to Sisyphus’ Herculean effort of rolling his boulder upwards, their brief time together as a family is the boulder reaching the apex, and Landi’s departure is the boulder falling.
You wonder what makes this family choose hope over despair. The answer? Love. It’s the unconditional love that Landi and Mercedes have for Deinis, who has severe autism and requires constant care and support, that reframes what initially appears to be some kind of cosmic punishment into an act of radical defiance.
The film is divided into two parts. In the first part, we follow Landi as he hunts in the harsh terrain of the jungle, including a hypnotic four-minute opening sequence, where he is carrying a dead crocodile draped around his back. Intermittent updates on the radio note the number of deaths in Cuba because of the pandemic, including messages from the government that the situation is under control. The juxtaposition of Landi’s lonely existence against the backdrop of the pandemic can be read as an unacknowledged tragedy—the forced isolation that people faced during COVID-19 may have been traumatic for many, but that trauma is nothing when compared to the degree of isolation that people living on the margins have had to contend with for most of their lives. These people were reduced to an irrelevant statistic long before the pandemic arrived.
Bim has carefully structured his film in a deliberate manner, such that the emotional heft of the narrative is gradually revealed to the audience as the story progresses. The second half focuses on Mercedes and her attempts to manage household chores as well as care for Deinis. At this point, the film evolves into a doomed love story, with the wife and child yearning for Landi to return from the hunt, to spend a few precious moments together as a family before being separated again. If the first half was all about surviving insurmountable odds, the second half reveals where this reservoir of resilience originates. We finally piece together why Landi and Mercedes continue to strive.
Given the emotional resonance of the story, it would have been convenient for Bim to err on the side of melodrama and oversentimentality. But to his credit, he displays an assuredness in craft and tonal control that is commendable for a first feature, never overplaying his hand and always focusing on the humanity of his characters. This control enables the film to deliver the emotional sucker punch it intends, without the narrative coming across as forced or manipulative.
Bim’s even-keeled approach to the story is reinforced by his choice to use minimal dialogue and rely on the power of his images to convey meaning. The use of natural sounds that punctuate the family’s surroundings creates a subtle, immersive tempo—your breathing rises and falls in sync with Landi’s footsteps in the jungle, your heartbeat taps into the subconscious rhythm of Mercedes’ chores. And before you know it, you have become an active participant in this story.
To the West, in Zapata is an ode to the quiet and unsentimental nature of survival for people on the margins. It begins as a portrait of a family’s hardship but quickly transforms into a testament of how love endures despite the most precarious circumstances. The hill is still there. The boulder will roll down again. But for the moment, we can imagine Sisyphus and this family to be happy.
Virat Nehru
© FIPRESCI 2025