Down to the Bone

Every Novem­ber 2nd, Mex­i­cans cel­e­brate the Day of the Dead. Close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with oth­er Catholic hol­i­days (All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day), the Day of the Dead gives par­tic­i­pants a chance to pray for and remem­ber dear­ly depart­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends. And it’s often car­ried out in a fes­tive spir­it, not one marked by melan­choly. As Car­los Fuentes, one of Mex­i­co’s most cel­e­brat­ed writ­ers, once said about death: “We Mex­i­cans don’t advance towards death, we return to it, because death is not the end but the begin­ning, the start of every­thing: we descend from death.”

Today, on the Day of the Dead, we give you a clay­ma­tion film that cap­tures the mood of the hol­i­day — Has­ta los hue­sos or Down to the Bone. René Castil­lo, a self-taught ani­ma­tor from Guadala­jara, wrote and direct­ed the film back in 2001. And it went on to win many inter­na­tion­al awards for excel­lence in film. Down to the Bone runs nine min­utes, and it’s a wild ride through­out. H/T M.S.