Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Tótem
2023 · Lila Avilés · Tótem on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch how low and close the camera stays to Sol. (camera)
Diego Tenorio anchors the camera to seven-year-old Sol's height, so adults are often glimpsed through doorways or past shoulders, partial rather than whole.
Payoff: You end up sharing a child's limited vantage instead of an adult's full view of the day.
Listen for how many conversations overlap at once. (sound)
Avilés layers overlapping dialogue, ambient household noise, and music from radios so meaning arrives in fragments, the way a child overhears an adult household.
Payoff: The dense soundtrack puts you in the same half-informed position as Sol herself.
Notice how many actions happen at once in one room. (staging)
Avilés stages someone cooking while another argues while a child plays while a phone rings, all inside the same shot, across the depth of the house.
Payoff: The crowded staging makes the house feel like a living organism rather than a set of separate scenes.
Count the small animals living inside the house. (setting)
A bonsai, a caged bird, fish, snails, ants, and a scorpion all share the household with the family, each a small life running on its own clock.
Payoff: The menagerie keeps reminding you that many small lives and small deaths share one habitat.
Watch Sol's face in scenes where adults talk over her. (performance)
Naíma Sentíes plays Sol mostly through small reactions and careful looking, saying little while absorbing everything happening around her.
Payoff: Her watchfulness becomes your own instrument for reading a day the adults won't fully explain to her.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch what the adults stop saying whenever Sol walks into the room.