Sightlines · reception
How Post Tenebras Lux was received
2012 · Carlos Reygadas · Post Tenebras Lux on Sightlines
The arc
Booed at its Cannes premiere in 2012 — and then won Reygadas Best Director anyway, one of the great jury-vs-audience trolls of the decade. It's since settled into 'misunderstood masterpiece' territory for a devoted slow-cinema crowd, though the walkout contingent never fully surrendered.
What’s debated
The eternal fight: is this a profound dream-logic self-portrait or arthouse self-indulgence at its most punishing — and does the glowing red devil clinch the case for either side?
Its footprint
That luminous CGI devil padding through a house with a toolbox is the film's calling card — endlessly screenshotted, memed, and used as shorthand for 'festival cinema at its weirdest.' The blurred, doubled edges of its boxy frame are almost as recognizable.
Where it stands
A cult object and cinephile litmus test — the kind of film Letterboxd reviewers invoke to sort the true believers from the tourists.
Did you know? Reygadas cast his own young children, Rut and Eleazar, in central roles and shot much of the film in and around his own home in rural Mexico.