User Reviews

This short film is a beautiful breath of fresh air amidst the current popular cinema. Pedro González-Rubio reveals the daily life of a young Italian boy, Natan, who has gone to visit his father and grandfather in Mexico, where they live at sea as fishermen. The film is more of a documentary, not following any intense plot, but rather, reflecting on the beauty of nature and the loving relationship between father and son. The cinematography is breathtaking, and I found myself wishing I could live at sea along the Banco Chinchorro as well. The absence of any music or soundtrack throughout the film is both interesting and compelling, because it forces the viewer to focus on the natural sounds of water, wildlife, and simple human interaction and conversation. There is a deep tranquility to this film, a sensation that washes over the audience as well, and one that I particularly enjoyed.

Have you watched 'Fishing with John', John Lurie's tongue-in-cheek series of short documentaries, in each of which he takes one of his celebrity friends (Tom Waits, William Dafoe, Jim Jarmusch, etc.) fishing at an exotic location? This documentary is similar, only it's the real deal... There are no celebrities here and there's no messing around. You're invited to watch three generations of men (the youngest of which is a young boy called Natan) fishing freely off the coast of Mexico. For just over an hour you can forget about Facebook or Twitter, and observe what comes through as a beautiful, surprisingly bare way of life that is intrinsically connected to the wildlife and nature.

Before Natan splits to Rome indefinitely with his Italian mother, his Mexican father and grandpa give the child a taste of what it's like to be a fisherman. Director Pedro González-Rubio does a great job at capturing on film the family's situation and a sense of the kind of memories that Natan is to carry with him across to Europe.

Alamar, shown in the U.S. as To the Sea (2009), is directed, written, produced, filmed, and edited by Pedro González-Rubio. The film follows a young man from Italy, Natan Machado Palombini, who joins his father, Jorge Machado, and his grandfather, Nestór Marín, in a fishing village on the coast of Mexico.

As would be expected, this represents an immense change in culture and experience for Natan. However, his father and grandfather are so gentle, and their life--as portrayed in the film--so full of dignity, that Natan makes the transition smoothly and well.

This is an independent film that works, mainly because the characters are likable, the setting is new and different for U.S. viewers, and no artificial problems or disasters are introduced to move the plot forward.

This film will be acceptable on a small screen, but will work better on a large screen, because the sea and sky are an integral part of the film's composition. (We saw it at the Rochester 360- 365 film festival.) However, in any format, it's worth seeking out and viewing.

I saw this movie because it was the one that best matched with the time we where at the theater, me and my wife were not aware of this move and didn't had any previous knowledge of its existence. We ended up surprised for its simplicity, but at the same time for its beauty. Although it has a very poor production and basically there is no script, the plot is different for what we are used to. With a few words and fascinating images, the movie is a success when transmitting the audience how simple a life can be. I am giving 7 stars because I think they could have expressed the same beauty and simplicity in a 45 minutes format instead of 73.

This movie, in my opinion, is a true movie: It makes you go to another place, feel life at a different pace. And once you're there, you can smell the salty water. You can feel your feet touching the sand. You're there, experiencing life with that other human beings (may they be as real as humans or fiction characters, they are alive). If you are open to what the film is showing, soon it will seduce you.

The mood of the film fits perfectly to the images you see. It doesn't have that structured narrative so usual to more commercial films. It doesn't really matter if it's documentary or fiction, it's sensibility.

May you like it or not, it's cinema as its best.

If you're in the mood to experience beautiful "National Geographic" quality images of untouched nature and simple humanity, then yes, let this movie wash over you as a tranquil meditation of what life is really like without the amenities of modern day life. Three generations of boys, each turned into men, survive and thrive on a fishing trip off the world's second largest coral reef off Mexico. There is nervous tension when observing the barefooted boy explore his surroundings and react with his real-life father. Will the little one fall off the front of the boat, or be eaten alive by an alligator? Will they weather the storm together? This quiet contemplative film restores our faith in the basic fundamental principles of family. Their ideal lives of free living are however tinged by abandon and sacrifice. Attempt this trip to sense an existence freed of material possessions but filled with the joy and purity of heart.

In Pedro Rubio-Gonzales' charming documentary film, we're introduced to a young family, sadly on the brink of a (apparently amicable) break-up. Before leaving for Europe with his mother, the child spends some time with his father, fishing off the beautiful Mexican coast. 'Alamar' just watches the two of them together: whatever his flaws as a husband, the father is laid back, and at one both with nature and his son: their time together is relaxed and fundamentally healthy, albeit in the form of a holiday from the everyday reality of working for a living. This isn't an earth shattering movie: but it's affectionate and heart-warming.

The unconditional love of a father for his young son is paramount in Pedro Gonzales-Rubio's cinematic tone poem, Alamar, a lyrical film of rare natural beauty. Set in the Banco Chinchorro, the largest atoll in Mexico and the habitat of hundreds of different species, director Rubio's 73-minute part fiction and part documentary film is imbued with a love of the sea and respect for the environment. According to the director, "By photographing and developing a story based on the current relation between man and his habitat in Chinchorro (declared in 1996 a Natural Reserve of the Biosphere by UNESCO), I intend to portray my love for this region and the admiration and respect I have towards the lives of its fishermen." Though the young boy, Natan (Natan Machado Palombini), will soon leave for Rome, Italy to live with his Italian mother Roberta (Roberta Palombini), she agrees to let him spend time with his father Jorge (Jorge Machado), a spear fisherman, but it will not be for an extended stay. "We'll be gone for a while, and when we come back, you'll go with Mommy," he tells Natan sadly. Jorge lives with his own father, Matraca (Nestor Martin), in a house built on stilts in the middle of the water and their simple life is in harmony with nature. Together they show the young boy the way to reel in a fish, how to spear lobster and barracudas, and how to scale and clean fish for consumption.

Initially seasick, Jorge holds Natan lovingly until his sickness disappears and they are free to navigate the luminous blue-green waters. Together, Jorge, Natan, and Matraca dive under the water where, according to a travel guide for the Costa Maya region of Mexico, "the diving is spectacular with large blue sponges, many fish, turtles, sea walls full of life, and a clear sunlit scenario that includes many sunken ships." What soon becomes evident, beyond the simple satisfaction in life that they experience, is the bond between Jorge and Natan that develops between sleeping in hammocks, drinking strong coffee, and engaging in playful wrestling matches. Natan's new world is far from the challenges of living in a big city. Here there are no I-pods, cell phones, or high-definition TV, only the stark beauty of unspoiled nature.

Important lessons about life are also learned. Natan has his first experience of loss and impermanence when the white bird they named Blanquita which they have been feeding every day, suddenly disappears. Alamar is a hypnotic and poetic film that is a welcome change from the never-ending assembly line of films about social dysfunction of one kind or another. An ode to fatherly love, it is a poignant reminder of the phrase of the Roman poet Ovid who said, "Everything changes, nothing dies." Joy turns to tears, which again turns to joy in an endless cycle, yet, though circumstances change, love is a constant that endures.

This film tells a beautiful story about a family divided my the absence of love between two parents and their common love for their son Natan. Natan travels from Italy to spend some time with his father and grandfather in Banco Chinchorr. Because Natan's father and grandfather are fishermen his spend much of his time in and on the clear blue waters of Banco Chinchorro, an atoll reef lying off the southeast coast of the Municipality of Othón P. Blanco in Quintana Roo, Mexico, near Belize. A lovely movie all can enjoy, especially if you are looking for a delightful movie at the pace of paradise. This film has my on the next flight to Mexico.

I apologize should I offend anyone with my opinion, but I saw this movie with a friend who is a native Mexican. We both were bored stiff! We both kept waiting from something to happen, but nothing did. There's no plot and no real story. A boy spends some time with his father fishing before he has to leave with his mother for her native Italy since the parents are divorced. The grandfather joins them and one sees endless scenes of the men/boy fishing and cleaning fish. What's so great about looking at dead fish? The best part of the film was the bird (egret?), which becomes somewhat of a pet for a short time. Maybe because I am a woman I don't get the "male bonding thing" that seems to be a thread throughout the movie. I'm glad the movie was only 73 minutes long. I had a hard time keeping awake already.

Once in a while, a film appears that restores one's faith in the cinema as a medium, and reminds one of its possibilities for opening a window on a magical world. This is one such film. The film is unconventional, and proceeds at a slow pace certain to madden even further the madding crowd. But for those who like to know more about 'real life', especially in unfamiliar surroundings, this slice of life provides a unique vision. The main characters are a man and his son, and the man's elderly father. It seems that the man and his son really are just that, whereas the grandfather is an actor. The man is a Mexican 'of Mayan Indian descent', though he does not look like a Lacandone to me, so he must be from another tribe descended from the Maya of this particular region (the Lacandone, who are pure Maya, being much further inland, living in depths of the forests), and his son has come to visit him on the Mexican coast from his Italian mother, who lives in Rome. It is the boy's introduction to a timeless way of life which in many respects is thousands of years old. The setting is the remarkable Mexican heritage site of Banco Chinchorro, a coral reef in the sea near the ancient Maya centres of Quintana Roo and Cozumel, in the Caribbean off south-eastern Mexico. The father and grandfather live the lives of simple fishermen in a hut on stilts just off the shore. The film features a great deal of undersea photography showing them spearing lobsters on the seabed without oxygen tanks, but only snorkels. The young Mexican director Pedro Gonzalez Rubio, who studied at the London Film School, has made this amazing film with himself as writer, cameraman and editor, and apparently the assistance of only two other people apart from the cast. He says he wanted to show life 'in the middle of the sea, in the place of origins'. He certainly succeeded in doing that, for there is a timeless quality to this film. It makes such a difference in a feature film which is not a documentary to see real people doing real things in real places rather than the perpetual parade of illusion which is what feature films normally are. The life portrayed here in the house on stilts and in the sea, the lack of any watch or clock, the entire immersion in 'what happens naturally' (often personified as 'Nature') is a salutary lesson to us all, prisoners as we are of a rigidly systematized and over-structured reality which is really a false reality. The people in this film are living a dream, and it is a true dream, whereas we are living a nightmare, and it is a false one, a monstrous parody of life invented and enacted by maniacs. One of the touching emotional details in this film is the friendship between the boy and a wild egret whom he names Blancquita. Although the little white bird has yellow eyes, when the boy draws it, he gives it blue eyes. Frigate birds and a young crocodile also feature as characters in the film. Rubio is a poet, and his filmed poem is a masterpiece.

Named as the film of 2010 by a site in which I invest some credence, Alamar was something I was keen to seek out and take in, its status as an is-it-isn't-it-documentary an added factor to its appeal.

Leaving the urban residence of his mother to spend time with his father and grandfather off the Mexican coast, Natan experiences the wonders of unadulterated nature in this tiny fishing community.

There has been some degree of questioning as to whether Alamar ought to be classed as a documentary, owing perhaps to its lack of a distinct narrative as such. Certainly the lifestyle it portrays and documents is a real one, lived by real people in the real world. The names of the performers seem to suggest that this is a real family, Natan the actual son of these parents rather than simply playing the role. Maybe it is a documentary. Maybe there is fictionalisation; maybe this sets it apart and classifies it as a narrative film. The one thing I can say for sure is that whether it is documentary or not is irrelevant. It matters not in the slightest whether this story is a reality, whether these people really relate to each other, whether they are paid actors, for so engrossing, engaging, endearing, and enthralling is the film that we are made to feel almost as though we are right there with them every step of the way as they travel from city to sea, from urbanity to rurality of the most secluded sort imaginable. To call the film's cinematography majestic would be to call the ocean which plays such a huge part in its beauty wet: a gross understatement. Each frame lovingly captures the dazzlingly effulgent seascapes, every second of audio the enrapturing calm, the comforting hush. The phrase "words can't describe" is tossed about all too often, almost stripped of the true significance of its meaning, but it can be put to use here without even the slightest suggestion of hyperbole. Words cannot describe the encompassing wonder of the images and sounds captured; indeed, it seems only film can do so. One gets a sense that it is exactly this kind of task for which the medium was envisaged: to present that which can be expressed, be conveyed, be imagined in no other way. There is a complex simplicity to the way of life Alamar depicts, a system of frugality and self-sustenance which is deeply humbling, even moving, to witness. Sitting there, watching this astounding film portray this astounding life on my fancy television and DVD player in my suburban home, all but indistinguishable from the hundreds of clones around it, tears of joyous appreciation graced my cheeks; tears of recognition, of understanding that there remains such vast and astounding beauty in the world. For some 73 minutes I was transported into another life, a life wherein I could appreciate something completely different. Many would describe it as a basic existence, but it is so much more than that. So much more. To see the young Natan revel in the regal splendour of the bird he declares "Blanquita" is to be transported mentally, emotionally, philosophically, to an entirely different plane. Words may not be able to describe the feelings which this emotional experience engenders, but one word can sum up precisely the experience itself: cinema. Purely and simply, this is cinema; this is its power, its potential realised.

Writing about Alamar, thinking about it and picturing once more its perspective-altering images makes me immediately want to turn my back on everything I know and live life as these people do, out in the great wild open. Thankfully, I can do just that with the film, for so powerful is its effect, if only for 73 minutes...

«Alamar» is a film about difference, cultural difference, different points of view, and different approaches to life. It is also a film about education, learning the simple principles on which humankind rests upon, learning the beauty of nature and its manifestations. Combining both concepts, «Alamar» is also a film about a different education, that necessary complement to schooling we have been deprived of, as lost as we are in modernity, urban settings and artificial life styles. Every sequence in the movie consists of lessons of life and nature a Mexican father gives to his little son, born from a romance with an Italian woman and who is about to move to Europe with his mama. Little Natan goes where his father Jorge lives in Banco Chinchorro, the second largest coral reef on planet Earth. Fishing, swimming, diving, learning about species of plants and animals, eating fresh sea food (which tastes so good and different from that flavorless frozen sea stuff we buy in supermarkets), all that is lived and learnt from his father and his surrogate grandfather. The sequence involving the African egret they call Blanquita is quite revealing of Jorge's persona: he teaches young Natan how to approach and "befriend" a wild animal. Jorge seems so in atonement with nature that animals are not afraid of him, as also seen in a deleted scene with a hermit crab. Without a plot full of gimmicks to keep our attention and just with an invitation to sit and watch, «Alamar» is a highly recommendable, moving and fascinating observational documentary.

(2009) Alamar (In Spanish and Italian with English subtitles) DOCUMENTARY

Edited, written, produced and directed by Pedro González-Rubio documenting the rapport between a father, Jorge a spear fisherman who chooses the life to live the life around the coral reefs with his son, Natan who he shares custody with his ex, Roberta Palombini who prefer to live in the dry land in Italy. The main reason they live apart and are separated as she prefers to live on dry land. As viewers see how Jorge along his dad, Matraca (Nestor Martin) build a life there from selling his catch to skippers nearby to his interaction toward sea life.

The plot had a lot of potential but the movie was difficult to watch. There was very little dialogue and a lot of repetitive scenes. The movie seemed to be an "a day in the life" sort of storyline with no real climax or conflict. The scenery was beautiful and I think that some simple melodies in the background would have done a lot to enhance the film. The relationship developed between father and son was admirable but lacked real substance. Overall this movie fell flat despite all of its potential and the beautiful scenery and wonderful scenes of father and son bonding over fishing. This movie is one that I would not watch again.

As the Activities Director I shared this beautiful film with the residents in the ALZ/Dementia community I work in. I remember having seen this film several years ago and enjoying it. Out theme this month has been on World Oceans so I thought Alamar might be a soothing and sweet film for them and even their caregivers to watch and enjoy. For the ease of following the story line better, my staff used english subtitles dubbed in english. They seemed captivated and enjoyed the scenery, beautiful peaceful village by the sea and a simpler way to live. Sweet 3 gen male relationships enjoyed on our Fathers Day weekend.

I am astounded by the obtuseness of the people here complaining that this beautiful movie lacks plot or narrative. A man and a woman drastically unsuited to each other have a child. The child spends some time with his father before his mother takes him away for good, far out of the father's reach. That's a huge story! Handled here the way it is, simply and sensitively, without false tension or wrong notes, this film delivers no thrills - no sharks, no drug cartels, no Russian submarines - just beautiful images and genuine emotions. The two fishermen are at one with nature, living lightly on the earth, or the sea rather, and they pass on their knowledge and wisdom to the boy with love. David Attenborough makes fine nature documentaries, obviously, but they have nothing to do with this movie.