Liborio opens on a scene of arresting beauty. A man trudges through an unforgiving storm in the tropical forest, dragging a bleating animal we never get to see. I immediately fear that I might not grasp all of what I am about to see for lack of knowledge about the context, spiritual in particular. But as the film progresses, effectively omitting some helpful factual and historical insights, I realise that I don’t need them. Nino Martínez Sosa takes us as close to Liborio as we would have been if we had met him—close enough to the mystery, not the man. Whether he was a prophet, a hero or a charlatan, Liborio the film is not much about the charismatic title character as it is about the people who believed in him—and the legacy of that belief. While recounting a fascinating and largely unknown real story, Sosa doesn’t encourage to understand or judge, but rather suspend our cynic rational urges and accept the myth for how it’s been passed on, looking for questions somewhere else—maybe within our own culture.
