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Cocote
Alberto is returning home from Santo Domingo for the funeral of his father, killed by a local loan shark who is untouchable thanks to his police-force position. The son arrives to find that his old man has already been put in the ground. He is expected to stay on, however, for the nine nights of novena, or rezos de los nueve dias, a prospect that disturbs him, though it’s not immediately clear why. In time we gather that there is a gulf between Alberto’s faith and his family’s – while both evoke the name of Jesus, the similarities don’t go much further. With his pressed white shirts, humble comportment and Bible tucked at his side, Alberto is the very picture of the clean-living evangelical, dismissing talk of a curse on his father as so much “nonsense”. But back home they practise their own indigenous strain of Christianity, one heavily streaked with Catholic pomp and influences from West Africa, known as Los Misterios. At the centre of Cocote is this push-pull between Alberto’s Christianity, of the pacific and turn-the-other-cheek variety, and the more fervid, half-pagan beliefs of his extended family, particularly his adoptive sister Karina (Judith Rodríguez), in whose minds the crime that has been committed demands repayment in blood. Source: Pinkerton, Nick. "Cocote." Sight and Sound, vol. 28, no. 8, 2018, p. 54-55.