Enjoyed this totally relaxed presentation of REAL reality life. The kid, the Dad and Grandpa were great, just being themselves, but an Academy Award should go to the camera person, and to the bird (as a best supporting actress). Could almost smell that seafood stew, yum. Rome looked pretty boring by comparison!

«Alamar» is a film about difference, cultural difference, different points of view, and different approaches to life. It is also a film about education, learning the simple principles on which humankind rests upon, learning the beauty of nature and its manifestations. Combining both concepts, «Alamar» is also a film about a different education, that necessary complement to schooling we have been deprived of, as lost as we are in modernity, urban settings and artificial life styles. Every sequence in the movie consists of lessons of life and nature a Mexican father gives to his little son, born from a romance with an Italian woman and who is about to move to Europe with his mama. Little Natan goes where his father Jorge lives in Banco Chinchorro, the second largest coral reef on planet Earth. Fishing, swimming, diving, learning about species of plants and animals, eating fresh sea food (which tastes so good and different from that flavorless frozen sea stuff we buy in supermarkets), all that is lived and learnt from his father and his surrogate grandfather. The sequence involving the African egret they call Blanquita is quite revealing of Jorge's persona: he teaches young Natan how to approach and "befriend" a wild animal. Jorge seems so in atonement with nature that animals are not afraid of him, as also seen in a deleted scene with a hermit crab. Without a plot full of gimmicks to keep our attention and just with an invitation to sit and watch, «Alamar» is a highly recommendable, moving and fascinating observational documentary.

Wow like the postcard said "WISH I WAS THEIR", simply irresistible, loved it up until I saw the crocodile munching fish, imagine falling in that water OMG.... had me for a while I took swimming anytime day or night out of the equation. but honestly the best viewing ever, please make part 2, I do believe movies/documentaries of this nature should be made more often, amazed of the way the locals absorbed their day to day rooted lifestyles, carefree and what seemed to me as contented, without any hassles of the very fast western way of life, so no one really needed to utter a word, Oh and the hunt to find the white egret Blanquita, love you Blanquita, Im going to buy myself a white hamster and call it well what do you think!, I really would love to meet the cast of this film. well done guys

Once in a while, a film appears that restores one's faith in the cinema as a medium, and reminds one of its possibilities for opening a window on a magical world. This is one such film. The film is unconventional, and proceeds at a slow pace certain to madden even further the maddening crowd. But for those who like to know more about 'real life', especially in unfamiliar surroundings, this slice of life provides a unique vision. The main characters are a man and his son, and the man's elderly father. It seems that the man and his son really are just that, whereas the grandfather is an actor. The man is a Mexican 'of Mayan Indian descent', though he does not look like a Lacandone to me, so he must be from another tribe descended from the Maya of this particular region (the Lacandone, who are pure Maya, being much further inland, living in depths of the forests), and his son has come to visit him on the Mexican coast from his Italian mother, who lives in Rome. It is the boy's introduction to a timeless way of life which in many respects is thousands of years old. The setting is the remarkable Mexican heritage site of Banco Chinchorro, a coral reef in the sea near the ancient Maya centres of Quintana Roo and Cozumel, in the Caribbean off south-eastern Mexico. The father and grandfather live the lives of simple fishermen in a hut on stilts just off the shore. The film features a great deal of undersea photography showing them spearing lobsters on the seabed without oxygen tanks, but only snorkels. The young Mexican director Pedro Gonzalez Rubio, who studied at the London Film School, has made this amazing film with himself as writer, cameraman and editor, and apparently the assistance of only two other people apart from the cast. He says he wanted to show life 'in the middle of the sea, in the place of origins'. He certainly succeeded in doing that, for there is a timeless quality to this film. It makes such a difference in a feature film which is not a documentary to see real people doing real things in real places rather than the perpetual parade of illusion which is what feature films normally are. The life portrayed here in the house on stilts and in the sea, the lack of any watch or clock, the entire immersion in 'what happens naturally' (often personified as 'Nature') is a salutary lesson to us all, prisoners as we are of a rigidly systematized and over-structured reality which is really a false reality. The people in this film are living a dream, and it is a true dream, whereas we are living a nightmare, and it is a false one, a monstrous parody of life invented and enacted by maniacs. One of the touching emotional details in this film is the friendship between the boy and a wild egret whom he names Blancquita. Although the little white bird has yellow eyes, when the boy draws it, he gives it blue eyes. Frigate birds and a young crocodile also feature as characters in the film. Rubio is a poet, and his filmed poem is a masterpiece.