1519: Three conquistadores set off to ascend Popocatepetl by order of Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizzaro. They have to explore the territory. The conquest of Tenochtitlan – and thus the annihilation of the Aztec empire – will shortly take place. Historical records exist of only one person: Diego de Ordaz. The men with whom we set off to climb the mountain along beaten tracks are robber barons – of that there is no doubt. They themselves reflect on and argue about this subject. De Ordaz turns out to be a fanatic, a manic. The ascent becomes steeper and steeper, they become more tired and more quiet. Their motives are less and less important…
A journey into the unknown that seems like a Pyrrhic victory or a cosmic marginal note. Time and again we see the group and how they flounder from afar. They seem to be smaller than ants, they become almost invisible in this gigantic inhospitable sphere of life full of stones and glaciers. They seem lost in more and more frosty shades of grey, blue and white. It is strange that Rubén Imaz (Cefalópodo, 2010) and Yulene Olaizola (Fogo, 2012) have both worked on feature films individually before. For this film, their particular idiosyncrasies (their interest in indigenous cultural remains, their fascination for the poetry of exhaustion and deflation) merge in a congenial manner.
