Against Nature
A Mexican debut that refuses to explain itself — and doesn't need to
Jonás returns to the Mexican countryside after years away to work as a stonemason. That's the plot. What the film actually does is something stranger: it uses the physical labor of cutting and placing stone as a gateway into something you can't quite name — a force that seems to move through the landscape, through the people who live there, and through time in ways that resist explanation. Against Nature premiered at the 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2026, and it's the kind of debut that announces a singular voice rather than a competent one.
Why Axel Bertha's debut is getting festival attention
Against Nature — Contra la naturaleza in Spanish — marks director Axel Bertha's feature debut, and the film landed in the Proxima competition, a section specifically for bold first and second features from emerging international directors. That selection tells you something about how seriously the festival took Bertha's ambitions.
The production was genuinely cross-border: Mexican producers Domme Cinema and Cárcava Cine partnered with U.S. coproducers The Lift and Love Song. This kind of structure is increasingly common for festival arthouse work, and you can see it in the finish — this doesn't look like a shoestring project. The score, by Ela Minus and Ariel Guzik, gives the film an almost ceremonial texture. Somewhere between ambient drone and something older and harder to name.
Here's the detail nobody mentions much: Bertha drew inspiration from an actual murder case documented in a local Mexican police report. Not a dramatization — the blunt, bureaucratic reality sits underneath the film's lyrical surface like bedrock. That's why the cruelty never feels decorative. It's there because it happened.
The 88 minutes that feel much longer
Jonás doesn't say much. He can't, or won't — the film treats his silence not as a character quirk but as a wound, a gap where ordinary communication should be. What's striking is how confidently Bertha refuses to give you narrative handrails. No expository dialogue. No explanation of who Jonás is or what he's running from. The film earns its mystery rather than performing it.
Critics at Karlovy Vary flagged the hypnotic visual style immediately — long takes of stone, soil, and sky that accumulate meaning the way a piece of music does, through repetition and variation rather than through plot mechanics. The Hollywood Reporter called it "haunting," which fits, though it undersells what's actually happening here. Bertha seems genuinely interested in the idea that cruelty is cyclical — that it moves through generations and landscapes the way water moves through rock. Slowly. With enormous force.
The sound design is doing as much narrative work as the camera. Wind, insects, the scrape of stone on stone — these build into something that feels almost threatening, and that's when the film's spiritual dimension becomes most legible. Honestly, the performance at the center holds all of this together. The actor's physical specificity — the way he handles tools, the particular quality of his stillness — keeps him human even when the film is reaching toward the mythic.
Where to watch Against Nature right now
Against Nature is available on major OTT services, though its distribution rollout is still developing given its recent festival premiere. For the most current picture of where to stream it across platforms, rental options, and regional availability, check Movie OTT's where-to-watch tracker — it pulls live data so you're not hunting through outdated listings.
Festival titles from Karlovy Vary's Proxima competition tend to find streaming homes within months of their premiere, and this one has the profile that platforms looking for distinctive world cinema will notice. If you've got a subscription to a major platform that carries international cinema (MUBI, The Criterion Channel, or arthouse-focused tiers), it's worth checking there first.
If you've responded to these, Against Nature belongs on your list
Think back to Jauja, Zama, or the quieter end of Carlos Reygadas' work. If those films held you — if you didn't need plot momentum to stay engaged — Bertha's debut is worth your time. It's slow. It's strange. It earns both of those qualities. The 88-minute runtime never overstays its welcome, yet the film feels much larger than its running time suggests.
This isn't darkness for shock value. This is a filmmaker asking whether cruelty and the sacred might be two names for the same force moving through a landscape and the people who live there. That's a rare question for a 2026 debut to be asking at all.
Common questions
Q: Is Against Nature based on a true story?
Partially. Bertha cited a real murder case from a local Mexican police report as key inspiration. The film doesn't dramatize that case directly, but the documented reality of human cruelty informs the emotional foundation.
Q: What language is it in?
Spanish — the original title is Contra la naturaleza. Check your platform for subtitle or dubbed options depending on your preference.
Q: Who composed the score?
Ela Minus and Ariel Guzik. Critics at Karlovy Vary specifically highlighted this pairing as central to the film's atmosphere.
Q: Should I watch this if I haven't seen much Mexican cinema?
You don't need context. The film works on its own terms. But if you want to prepare, Movie OTT's international drama section has recommendations for recent Mexican features that'll give you a sense of the landscape Bertha's working in.
The bottom line: Against Nature is the kind of 88-minute film you'll find yourself thinking about for considerably longer. Keep it on your radar as streaming availability expands.