The Echo review – insightful study of an isolated community

Whether she is working in fiction, with Prayers for the Stolen, the lyrical exploration of lives shadowed by the threat of cartel abductions, or documentary, with Tempestad or her latest film, The Echo, the Salvadoran-Mexican director Tatiana Huezo trains her lens on to lives that other film-makers fail to see.

In the case of this insightful, immersive documentary, the lives are those of the village community of El Eco, an isolated mountain settlement in Puebla state, Mexico. Huezo captures the rhythms of life throughout seasons that throw extreme weather at the villagers – droughts threaten the staple corn crops; floods turn the hillsides into treacherous bogs that trap waterlogged sheep. The local children have a front-row seat to a cycle of life that includes the birth of livestock and the death of a much-loved grandmother. With a keen eye, Huezo explores gender roles and thwarted dreams in the village.

• In UK and Irish cinemas