Making its world premiere this Tuesday as part of the 50th Toronto International Film Festival’s Discovery section, Karla Badillo’s directorial debut Oca tells a Buñuelian fable of faith, pilgrimage, and revelation. With the impressive cast of Natalia Solián (Huesera: The Bone Woman), Cecilia Suárez (the House of Flowers), Leonardo Ortizgris (Güeros), Gerardo Trejo-luna (A Million Miles Away), and Raúl Briones (La Cocina), the film also incorporates non-professional actors from the San Luis Potosí region who were discovered by casting director Daniel Rivera. Ahead of the premiere, we’re pleased to present the exclusive trailer.
Here’s the TIFF synopsis: “Moving between the mystical, the poetic, and the deeply existential, Oca follows Rafaela (Natalia Solián), a devoted young nun who experiences visions and dreams. She embarks on a journey to a distant town where a new archbishop has recently been appointed. Rafaela belongs to a dwindling congregation, Las Marianas, of which only three sisters remain, and her superior insists she only come back with good news regarding its survival. The film thus builds a narrative of pilgrimage, towards both a geographical destination and the most intimate concepts of — and doubts about — faith. Along the way, the nun encounters various characters: a group of pilgrims with whom she briefly travels, but who reveal their selfishness when they refuse to help her; a paratrooper with whom she shares ideas and silences; and a woman married to an influential man who represents the arena of privilege. Each encounter becomes a trial, a mirror, and a physical and spiritual detour. Rafaela’s challenging faceoffs with the complex human condition reveal the pain of sustaining a spiritual calling in a broken and material world. She wonders about the wind, about God’s signs, and whether divine intentions can shift, just as the wind does. The answers may lie just beyond her grasp.”
“I’m drawn to the world of dreams and their meaning,” said the director. “A dream leads us to see images with our eyes closed; I find that idea powerful because it involves looking inward. My first impulse to think about Oca was a dream and my curiosity to discover its meaning. The overthinking that was unleashed in me by the enigma of having dreamed something cryptic and unfinished frustrated and fascinated me.”
See the trailer below.
