XIBALBA

This film was not conceived as a project. It emerged as a necessity.

For a long time, I built my identity around the need for recognition. My sense of self was tied to external validation, to movement, to achievement. But when my body failed me, and my own insecurities forced me to stop, I entered what I now call a “Silent Winter”. A period where everything that once felt solid began to collapse.

In that stillness, something unfamiliar appeared. Space. And within that space, discomfort, confusion, and eventually, a deeper form of awareness.

Travel had always been a way for me to escape. A way to breathe, to reset. But this time, it became something else. Not an escape, but a descent.

Filmed in the Yucatán, this journey naturally intertwined with the Mayan concept of Xibalba. Not as a literal underworld, but as a symbolic passage. A space of confrontation, where one must face what has been avoided. A place not of death, but of transformation.

The film moves between inner and outer landscapes. Between the controlled space of reflection and the unpredictability of lived experience. This tension is intentional. Because the process itself was fragmented. Part observation, part surrender.

I was not trying to explain what was happening. I was trying to stay with it.

Elements of altered perception and expanded states of consciousness became part of that process, not as spectacle, but as tools for introspection. They opened cracks in the narrative I had built about myself. And allowed something more honest, and less certain, to emerge.

This film does not offer answers. It is an attempt to remain present within a question.

What happens when we stop running from ourselves?