While Ixcanul is not overtly focused on immigration, in these various discussions it humanizes the fears, challenges, questions and desires involved.

| Dec 12, 2023

Protagonist María [is] played with a fierce calm by María Mercedes Coroy.

| Feb 27, 2021

The film is quite stunning to look at. And its sincerity and seriousness are unquestionable.

| Feb 14, 2021

The young woman, whose coming-of-age story this is, responds limply to every force she comes in contact with.

| Jun 10, 2020

The film is comfortably languid.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 28, 2018

Thankfully, Guatemalan filmmaker Jayro Bustamante has crafted an impressive and introspective debuted gem that fuels honesty and a compelling brand of insight tip-toeing through the tunnels of cultural triumph and tragedy.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 9, 2018

The greatest success of Ixcanul, about a Maya woman living in the Guatemalan mountains, is that it makes you feel as though you have come to deeply understand a culture that is so deeply unfamiliar to us

| Original Score: 9/10 | Nov 2, 2018

It often feels like there are a few different movies going on within Ixcanul at the same time, but they're all well constructed enough to make it come together as a mostly cohesive whole.

| Original Score: 3.6/5 | Aug 28, 2018

Ixcanul eludes the kind of drama that ceremoniously, if all too inevitably, attends the bucolic strands of narrative suggested by Bustamante's chosen milieu, instead opting for a more earthy but no less exigent denouement.

| Oct 10, 2017

Beautifully shot with local residents represented in the cast, the story gains momentum and tragic dimensions as it progresses.

| Aug 28, 2017

Director Jayro Bustamante erupts onto the scene and brings forth the Guatemalan film Ixcanul (from the Mayan word for volcano), which he delivers with graceful intimacy and a quiet force that builds and builds.

| Jun 21, 2017

The feature debut of Guatemalan filmmaker Jayro Bustamante is a beautiful and unsentimental portrait of traditional Mayan culture where peasants live in huts without electricity or running water ...

| Mar 9, 2017

Ixcanul is a mesmerizing, intimate and meditative coming-of- age tale that explores a culture rarely seen in films. [Full review in Japanese]

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 19, 2016

An age-old story is played out among the cinders.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 18, 2016

Bustamante never lets the story mechanics overwhelm the basic minute-to-minute reality of his subjects, resulting in a film that's earthy and unsentimental and riveting throughout.

| Nov 16, 2016

There's nothing glaringly wrong with Ixcanul, it's just hard to get whipped up for stoicism.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 21, 2016

The end ultimately justifies the means; whether viewers will want to stick it out is another thing.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 29, 2016

The ideal village-picture fable, as fascinating for its innate mythology as for its ethnography.

| Sep 22, 2016

While storytelling speed seems unbearable in the opening scenes, a rhythm emerges that identifies thrilling directorial control and an appreciation for the brutality of love and trust.

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 15, 2016

Ixcanul is a moving portrait of a clash of cultures we North Americans may never experience firsthand.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 26, 2016