To date the only film de Los Santos Arias has set in his home country, the rural crime fable Cocote likewise represents his first full-fledged foray into narrative cinema. Alberto (Vicente Santos), a mild-mannered gardener working for a wealthy family in Santo Domingo, travels home for his father’s funeral. Upon his arrival, he learns that his father has been murdered, and that he has been summoned to avenge the death—a notion that the deeply religious Alberto has difficulty reconciling. Over the course of a nine-day mourning ritual, Alberto, who keeps a bible tucked firmly under his arm, reconnects with friends and family while threatening encounters with his father’s assailants force him to reconsider the efficacy of his faith. Integrating formal elements—chapter titles; a mix of color and black and white film stocks—from his previous experiments in observational and essayistic nonfiction, de Los Santos Arias constructs a feverish revenge drama that blends fiction and ethnography through an array of adventurous narrative and compositional devices that nod to forebears ranging from Jean Rouch to John Ford. A film rich in texture and rife with culturally specific detail, Cocote upends genre conventions without betraying the fundamental intrigue of an old-fashioned revenge saga.