"Ixcanul" will stay with you long after the film finishes. Writer and director Jayro Bustamante's film about poor Guatemalan coffee growers is hauntingly beautiful and heartbreaking. Filmed entirely in the Kaqchikel language of the Mayan family, Ixcanul means not only volcano, but also "the internal force of the mountain which boils looking for eruption."
Maria (Maria Mercedes Coroy) is a young girl soon to be married to Ignacio, the foreman of the coffee plantation, in an arranged marriage. Maria is also in a new relationship with Pepe. Her quiet, passive bearing reveals very little what she is thinking but her actions propel the second half of the film.
"Ixcanul" has a slow pace with a frank description of young sexuality in a Mayan patriarchal society that is a mix of Catholicism and the traditional Mayan religion that includes shamans and making offerings to the goddess that they believe lives inside of the volcano. Stay with the film and you will be rewarded with a deep caring for Maria.
María Mercedes Coroy is a 19 year old Guatemalan actress in her first acting role. She, along with María Telón are also in La Llorona, a 2019 Guatemalan horror film also directed by Jayro Bustamante that I reviewed last year:
https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=171908.msg1818822#msg1818822Jayro Bustamante with María Telón and María Mercedes Coroy
Both Ixcanul and La Llorona have a 97% and 98% rating on RT - both films are available on Amazon Prime
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ixcanul 
