Carlos Reygadas’s Silent Light (2007) premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007, where it won the Jury Prize, and has since remained one of his most celebrated and spiritually resonant works of the 21st century. Recently, the film has returned to the spotlight with a new restoration, screened at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival, part of a broader effort to preserve Reygadas’ cinematic legacy. Other past restorations have included Battle in Heaven (2005) and his debut feature Japón (2002), both reaffirming his place as a singular voice in the contemporary cinema.
Set in a remote Mennonite community in northern Mexico, Silent Light follows Johan, a farmer and devoted family man, as he struggles with an overwhelming inner conflict: he is in love with a woman who is not his wife. This crisis of the heart unfolds not through dramatic confrontation, but through silence, stillness, and an aching sense of inevitability. Reygadas uses this moral and emotional dilemma to meditate on themes of sin, forgiveness, and love, tapping into an almost spiritual dimension toward the film’s ending. Shot in the Plautdietsch language, Silent Light is distinguished by its luminous cinematography and its quiet, immersive portrayal of the natural world. The opening and closing shots, sunrise and sunset, frame the story within the rhythmic cycle of everyday life. Nature is not just a backdrop here, but a silent counterpart to human emotion, an enduring presence that reflects the fragility, longing, and contradictions of love.
I recently sat down with Carlos Reygadas to discuss his experience rediscovering Silent Light, the film’s origins, and some of its most renowned sequences, while also delving into his working methods with actors and his editing process.
Omar Franini: I’d like to start this interview by asking about the initial presentation of Silent Light at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007. I read that the version shown 18 years ago was longer than the one we’ve seen here in Locarno or in the years since. Is that true? And did you ever consider revisiting that longer version for this restoration?
Carlos Reygadas: Yes, it’s true. I’ve always thought that, you know, it was time to leave that in the past. There were just a few extra things here and there; I think it was altogether six or seven minutes longer. I remember a scene when they go to the place where he meets Marianne, the hotel she runs. In that version, she was serving ice cream and some people passed by, and she talked to them. So there was a bit more social interaction and context. But later, I felt it was better to clear all of that away, to make it more… I don’t want to say “pure,” but let’s say less influenced by social context or external elements. So I think cutting those parts was probably a good decision.
OF: And what can you tell me about the origin of the story? Had you always planned to set the film within the Mennonite community, or was that something that evolved over time?
CR: Basically, I remember at that time I was thinking about these events, I don’t even want to call it a story, but yes, these things happening, and not necessarily in a Mennonite community. Some people assume it had to be set there because the Mennonites are still religious and so on, but I actually first imagined it happening in a hospital in Mexico City. It could have been between doctors and nurses, or maybe just different doctors, I wasn’t sure. Then I drove up north and passed through Chihuahua, where they have these camps, they literally call them “camps.” And I thought this would be the perfect setting. Because it’s a classless society. There’s no context like the kind we usually build into the world. It allowed me to just talk about a woman, a man, a father, a brother, a dog, without needing specific accents, clothes, or particular houses. It stripped everything down to what was really happening: the emotional pain of someone who is loved and loves, and what happens when that person causes pain, while still wanting to be loyal to someone they love, but also believing they love someone else. That dynamic, the attraction, the infatuation, that was the core of the film. So, yes, it could have happened elsewhere. But I’m very glad it happened there, because I loved the light, the colors, the atmosphere. And I also found really interesting-looking people, whose faces had been shaped by the sun, the dust, and the harshness of life. You can see that in them.
OF: In your career, you’ve mostly worked with non-actors. How do you guide them through the scenes? Do you explain the meaning behind the scenes, or do you let them interpret it in their own way?
CR: At first, I don’t explain the rationale behind the scenes, because I don’t think you need to express anything specific to convey something. It’s more about the whole mechanism, as I said before, about creating an emotional dimension where things can happen. For example, someone told me recently, after watching the film, “I love how you can see people actually thinking.” And of course, if you just show someone sitting there for 30 seconds in a “thinking” pose, like this [the director gestures], it becomes a cliché. But often, someone can just be standing still, and they’re thinking just as deeply. So how do we know what’s going on inside someone, behind something we can’t see? Like anger, how do you know someone is angry? It’s not necessarily because they’re shouting or foaming at the mouth. It’s because the emotional dimension has been created in a specific space and time, based on what’s happening. That emotional charge is what I call the “emotional context.” And that’s what makes cinema different from painting or sculpture. Cinema is closer to music in that way, not in every way, but in the sense that it unfolds over time. Like literature and painting, cinema creates meaning, but it also does so with a temporal flow. So the emotion emerges from that structure, and the actors don’t need to be aware of it. They just need to bring their physical presence, their bodies, their words, their movements. All of that, together, creates the whole.
That said, it’s not a strict rule. Sometimes, if an actor isn’t quite getting there, you can offer them something, a spark, to help something happen. For example, when Esther dies by the tree, the actress was thinking about her own father, who had died recently in a tragic way. She said she wanted to bring that feeling into the scene. And I said, of course, you can bring your sadness in. But the emotional context of the film would take that sadness and attach it to what was happening in the story, this pain in the heart. So in the end, it was the sadness of her father’s death, but it became part of the character’s sadness through the structure of the film. That’s what I mean, you use all the tools of reality, and you organize them. It’s like setting things up so they all flow through a pipe, they have to align in order for the emotional current to pass through.
OF: How does it feel to watch the movie today after 18 years?
CR: I have to tell you, I have a very hard time revisiting my films. I never do it except for things like this, which I have to do. But yes, I had to see it in Locarno two days ago, and I left the screen immediately. I couldn’t even see the first credits. So this is all part of the past. I like to do it and then leave it behind. But I suppose, because my children, 16 and 17 years old now, for the first time in their lives saw a film I’ve made. And they said that it was completely relevant for them. It was like something that would have been made maybe yesterday, in the sense that it is dealing with things that are just so much part of our nature: the way we love, the way we desire, the way we’re confused, the way we are probably hopeful and then deceived, and then again hopeful. Always falling, and always wanting to get up again. These things are always part of our nature, so always present. And hopefully there’s nothing that can grow old when you deal with these issues, if you pay attention to them.
Some people sometimes use this concept of “slow cinema,” and I don’t think it’s about speed, but about how deep can you look into things. And then, if you stop and you look deeply, then the details inform everything. And then it may look slow, but it’s not slow if something is really happening on the screen. And I hope this film is that. So that’s the reason for which I feel close to it. And still, even though I haven’t… I just saw it very quickly so I could do the color again, but I’m trying to keep very distant from the actual film personally. That’s just completely personal.
OF: In a world marked by increasing turbulence, socially, politically, personally, Silent Light seems even more resonant today. How do you feel about its relevance in such a time?
CR: Yes, there’s huge turbulence in every possible way all over the world. There’s always been the same troubles, the same greed that makes us fight for everything, as always, for nothing — I mean, for the smallest things. But at the same time, now maybe, this… all the individualism that, despite the fact that we like to talk about community and this and that, just keeps on growing. The economical pressure so many people have, the hypocrisy of politicians, and also the questioning of so many ideas that we have constructed. Many of them, or the essential of them, are very important to question and even completely to overturn.
But at the same time, this questioning has brought certain things with it that, some of them, like every good idea, every revolution, brings also roads or paths that go amok, that don’t go anywhere. So sometimes you even think that the idea of love, the idea of a vertical connection of community — and by that I mean not only connecting with your peers, but connecting with above and with below, so we can pass on the knowledge and always go up the stairs, not only go in lateral movements — all of this has been part of the recent times. So it’s good.
I refer to my children, that they said, “I’m so happy I saw a film that felt meaningful,” in the sense of something that is being constructed and that can bring solace to us. So solace, but also thinking deeply, not just superficial diversion. So I think we have to observe, we have to connect, we have to think about what we do. And we have to be deeper, and not only flag-wavers. And of course, there is huge trouble in the world, but I think it will pass. And I am very optimistic. If we survive the wars or whatever, absolutely, we will carry on. And everything comes in cycles. That we do know.
OF: You’ve often talked about how much you pre-visualize your films, with storyboards and careful planning, but also how editing plays a crucial role. I remember you said that with Post Tenebras Lux (2012), you edited 96% of the film in one week, but struggled with the remaining 4% for 20 months. What was the editing process like for Silent Light, and how has your approach evolved over the years?
CR: I think a film, not even an image of course, but a whole film will not create a strong energy if it is not organized. So I think the images, which imply the sounds, let’s say the perception of the external world, because it’s just one, we separate it in organs, but it’s just a perception. And then the organization of this perception in blocks, in time, because no matter what we say, even if time can feel cyclical and is cyclical in a way — it is — it happens in a line, in a progressive line when you’re watching a film. There’s a beginning, and a development, and an end, just in time, properly, mathematically speaking.
So what I was saying is that I believe that you have to be able to connect the dots and put a form around them, so you can create, let’s say, a whole net that will work. Or any object, you know, an envelope, it doesn’t matter what it is, whatever object that you create has to have a form so it can… I don’t want to say “serve a purpose” because that is too directive, but so it can be what it is. Or an apple… it has to have the form of an apple. I’m not speaking in Platonical terms, just of things being whatever they are. So, you have to think about this and visualize this.
And then, this is the paradox. I used to like to storyboard and really prepare very carefully, but at the same time, you have to keep very alive all the time, especially during the shooting, and during the editing, and until the last moment of mixing, to see what is happening within this structure that you can design. So, things do happen all the time that are unexpected and that are not coming from your own vision but from whatever is out there. And you have to be able to capture and always keep flexibility and fluidity in what you are doing. So, for example, in the film I’m doing now [Wake of Umbra], for the first time, I didn’t want to do a storyboard. I just didn’t want to do it anymore. But I’m still quite serious with the dialogues. Many people think I don’t even write, and they look improvised. Precisely, they do, because they are very carefully written.
Sometimes, and that I confirm with this new film, when I said, “No, let’s not write the dialogue and just see how it goes,” it doesn’t work. It works so much better when it is really well written, because, you know, it’s been processed, it’s been thought, and it’s been synthesized. And this requires some attention. And very often, while you’re shooting, this attention can be, you know, maybe diverted, or it can be hampered by something. So, if you pre-organize, the more you prepare, the better you will be at improvising and at receiving changes and bringing flexibility to what you do. So I believe very much in preparation, in pre-visualization, and at the same time in complete openness. The more you prepare, the more open you are.
OF: The overture of Silent Light is mesmerizing, and I was wondering, are opening sequences as important to you as, say, the first sentence in a book? That feeling of, “This has to be just right,” because everything else unfolds from there. And do you struggle with how to frame the film, where it begins and where it ends?
CR: You’re totally right. I also think about the beginning of a book, the first sentence. Yes, it’s very important. The way you start, the way you end — both matter a lot. But the beginning especially stands out, because you’re coming from nothing. You walk into a cinema, or you turn on your TV, you’re coming from ordinary life, and then you begin sinking into this new world. That first contact is crucial. But actually, every part of the film is equally important. It’s just that the beginning feels more significant because it’s the entry point. Still, that same level of serious attention is applied to the whole film.
Now, since you mentioned books — and this is the tricky part — paying attention to these things doesn’t mean you need to be rigid, or try to make every moment a masterpiece. That would become too heavy. We all know Flaubert would sometimes take a whole day to write just a third of a page, maybe even just a sentence. And for a good reason. But if your writing starts to feel overworked or forced, it can have the opposite effect. It clogs the rhythm and energy of the piece. So you have to find a balance: be deep, have careful thinking, but also be open and awake to what’s happening in the moment. Especially in dialogue. You need to hear the intonations, the tempo, the true presence of the actors as they speak to each other. You need to feel the energy between them, not just stick to the dialogue you’ve written, even if it’s “very good,” let’s assume. That’s the difficult part. A film needs to be well thought out conceptually, like literature, but it also needs to be lived, to stay alive and responsive to the unpredictable. So yes, every sequence matters deeply. And of course, the opening sequence is the first one, so it’s immediately obvious how important it is.
OF: I’d like to ask you about one of the final scenes, the resurrection moment where time seems to start again. When Esther dies, it feels like time stops. What inspired you to include this resurrection? And also, about the final interaction: one might expect a closing moment between Johan and Esther, but instead, that never happens, which I’ve always found very interesting.
CR: Well, you know about the clock, that itself brought back the elapsing of time. It could be that maybe time stops for us when we are in moments of trouble, big crisis, you know. It can be death, it can be the break-up of a relationship, it can be strong economical hardship… I don’t know, something traumatic in our memory probably works as a pause in time flowing. And these maybe are, you know, the stones that mark the road along our life and time. It’s the basic moments when things are marked into who we are. And those seem to happen out of time in our memory, you know. Memory works out of time, let’s put it that way. So I think this is where the idea came from.
But let me remind you that all of this, we are now conceptualizing upon it, but the fact is that when it happens, when I wrote it, it was much more intuitive. I think rationality is intuitive, it’s intuition that pulls us forward. I think it is intuition that creates, and rationality is just like a check-up mechanism that you don’t always need to use. So I didn’t think of this before, that’s what I’m trying to say. Why do I have a clock here? Why do I want to have this and that? Mostly, the main strength of a whole film should, or maybe any other work of art should, come from intuition. And it doesn’t need to be clarified what you create.
And then there is reaction: why do they not meet? You know, [there’s] this famous film many people have always written about in regards to this film, which is Ordet (1955) by Carl Theodor Dreyer. Of course, that film is about direct divine intervention, let’s put it, and faith. So it’s by faith and divine intervention that this woman actually wakes up in Dreyer’s film. But in this film, it’s much more about psychological dimensions. Maybe it would just be that this is what he would have longed for, that he would have wished for, when he says, I would like to bring time back. And then maybe it just didn’t happen, maybe it happens partially, maybe things could have been different. So it’s like reality is what seems to be dominant, but actually reality also is in what we long for, exists in what we long for, exists in what we regret, exists in our dreams, in our imagination. So he does go into the room, we hear the door, but we never see him. So maybe he didn’t even go, maybe he’s already hallucinating, you know.
Also, of course, I like the fact that maybe this could have happened because of love, because the two women kiss each other with great deliverance, and then there’s this drop of fluidity that falls on her cheek, on her left cheek, on the side of the heart, and maybe she could come back to life. But we all know that this is almost maybe impossible. I don’t know if this happens, but I haven’t seen it happen. But we all long for it, we all wish we could do it. So maybe it’s all part of our nature and our reality to think in this way. So I’m just trying to escape this idea that the real is only the, let’s say, the physical present tense. This is not the real, this is only part of reality. The real is much more than that, much more than that. And our desires, our regrets and our images of anything else that is not in this physical present tense reality confirms reality also, a reality, in my view. And this is a philosophical question, of course. But for me, reality is what each one of us perceives as life. Because if we all die, there’s no more reality. There are just objects floating in space. Reality, for me, is a human concept that refers to human perception only.
OF: You’ve recently been part of the juries of major festivals like Cannes and now Locarno. How do you personally relate to this kind of recognition, especially when it often highlights your identity as a prominent Mexican filmmaker?
CR: Well, you know, I never really wanted to be part of the establishment. I used to say that I wouldn’t accept that kind of role until I was over 50, and back then I thought, “People over 50 think things like that will never happen,” but then it does. So I accepted the invitation from Locarno for the first time, and then Cannes followed, and I felt I had to go along with it too. But to be honest, it’s not a position I feel entirely comfortable in. As for being seen as an artist from Mexico, I do love my land and my culture, of course. But I mostly think in human terms. I feel I can relate more deeply with someone like you, for example, than with my own neighbor — it really depends on how I feel and connect with someone as a person. I think we should all try to see things in more universal terms. What unites us is 99.9% human. The rest is just superficial, the kind of labels we focus on because they’re easier to grasp, but ultimately not that meaningful. That said, when you ask about Mexico, of course, I hope recognition brings something good to the people around me, that they can have better lives, more access to culture, more opportunities to be inspired. But that’s something I’d wish for everyone, anywhere in the world.
OF: In today’s landscape, with the rise of streaming platforms, film labs, grants, and new funding models, what kind of space is left for an independent filmmaker to express a truly personal voice?
CR: I think it’s essential that we regain independence from all this doctoring of art and cinema. What’s happening now is a kind of standardization, and art, by its very nature, is the opposite of standardization. So we need to step away from all that. But as I said earlier, we live in a world that’s structured around competition for resources, and this affects every aspect of life, including cinema. That’s why many filmmakers go along with the system, because they also want the benefits it offers. The system, though, is deeply flawed.
And it’s not just a matter of “believing in your own voice,” as the question suggests. I actually don’t think we need to believe in ourselves, because that just leads to a fear of failure. If you’re focused on belief, you’ll always be afraid of losing it. What we really need is to be fully prepared to fail. The important thing isn’t to believe in ourselves, but to remember that we have just one life, and it may be very short. So the only thing that matters is using that time to be who we truly need to be. Not to “do our best,” but to be who we must be, and then we die. That’s it.
All this talk about positive energy, self-belief, having your own voice, who cares? You are your own voice, just like you have your own fingerprints. You don’t think about having your eyes, you just see. It’s the same with expression. You don’t need to believe in it. You just need to be. And the best reminder of that is death, the simple fact that we’re going to die. Maybe sooner, maybe later. So do what you need to do, live without fear, and if you manage that, maybe that’s what enjoyment really is: not living in fear.
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