Tekenchu: The Rite of the Nahuales

A few years ago a video went round Mexican social media: passengers on a minibus on the outskirts of Mexico City beating up the man who'd tried to rob them. That image of a community taking justice into its own hands stayed with Carlos Matienzo Serment, who comes from San Luis Potosí, and he mixed it with the nahual stories he'd heard as a child. The result is 'Tekenchu: The Rite of the Nahuales', his first feature, grown out of 'Tekenchu', a short he made during the pandemic that played more than 90 festivals.

The story is set in the Huasteca region of San Luis Potosí in the 1960s. Children are turning up dead in villages across the area, mutilated and with their teeth pulled out, and a federal agent, Vicente del Parral, is sent from the city to investigate. He runs into a community that clings to its old beliefs. Meanwhile, deep in the woods, two healers, Isabel and Teresa, take in a wounded outlaw, Gabriel, and give him shelter.

The two strands eventually meet, and between them prowls Tekenchu, a nahual that's half man and half beast. True to the legend, it protects and punishes in equal measure, and the film uses it to ask what people do when the state's justice never arrives. Much of the dialogue is in Tének, one of the Indigenous languages of the Huasteca.

It was shot in the forests of San Luis Potosí without any public funding, produced by Milko Luis Coronel and Santiago Rangel. The creature is a practical effect whose design is based on the turkey, and the director says early invited audiences liked it so much that they gave it more screen time. Gerardo Oñate wrote the script with cinematographer Roberto Chávez Bañuelos and plays Gabriel himself, alongside Alejandra Herrera, Caraly Sánchez and Gerardo Trejoluna, who's also in the cast of 'Mexican Psycho'.

The world premiere came in February 2026 in the Bright Future strand at Rotterdam, and on 7 May Cinemex released it on more than 500 screens across Mexico, where it opened ninth. Reviews were mostly positive. Milenio's critic was glad it steers clear of imitating 'The Wicker Man' or 'Midsommar', though several found the second act uneven. Matienzo already has his next monster in mind: the witches of San Luis Potosí's high plateau.

• Fantasy
• Horror