I Dream in Another Language

9/10/2022

I Dream in Another Language is ambitious but uneven. It has good ideas, but struggles with the execution. It’s visually flawless, which is a good thing if we subscribe to the theory that a picture is worth a thousand words, but it can also be seen as a triumph of style over substance, especially in a film that’s supposed to be about words – both said and unsaid. And yet, I can’t help liking it, because director Ernesto Contreras and screenwriter Carlos Contreras show a sincere love of language and communication, even if they, somewhat ironically, don’t know quite how to express it. It’s almost as if something was lost in the translation from dream to reality. The movie revolves around a fictitious indigenous language called Zikril. There are other plot points, but this is the most in