Malintzin 17

The pigeon is probably fake, says the five-year-old daughter of Mexican filmmaker Eugenio Polgovsky. Perhaps it’s a robot. Why else would a pigeon sit so still on that nest she built atop the power lines, diagonally under their window? For seven days and nights, Polgovsky filmed the bird from his second floor apartment. Together with daughter Mile, he watches life go by: the bin men, the neighbours and their dogs, the gas delivery man, the squirrels dashing through the treetops in search of food. All from the same perspective – basically identical to that of the brooding pigeon, who gets most attention. “Papa, why are you filming her, really?”

Polgovsky’s sister, Mara, found this material after Eugenio died suddenly, aged 40. She carefully edited it into a film, that is both his and hers. A philosophical, observational documentary that subtly, yet insistently, ponders the way nature is forced to adapt to the ever expanding human infrastructure.

Simultaneously, it is a disarming portrait of parenthood. They mess about, father and daughter. Chatting, asking each other questions, surprising each other with their answers, and finding a connection in their shared view of the outside world. Polgovsky’s death makes everything bittersweet: we see the world he left behind; along with his daughter, who has to watch the now empty nest without him.

Trailer