Blu-ray, DVD Release: Canoa: A Shameful Memory

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: March 14, 2017
Price: DVD $22.99, Blu-ray $27.99
Studio: Criterion

The adventurous 1976 “crime drama” Canoa: A Shameful Memory remains one of Mexico’s most highly regarded works of political cinema for the audaciousness of its attack on the Catholic Church.

The film reimagines a real-life massacre that occurred in 1968, eight years before the film’s release, when a group of urban university employees on a hiking trip were viciously attacked by residents of the isolated village of San Miguel de Canoa, who mistook them for communist revolutionaries.

Intercutting depictions of the days in the workers’ lives leading up to their journey and footage from a fictional documentary about the village and the autocratic priest who governs it with the scenes of the atrocity itself, director Felipe Cazals (Las inocentes) creates a terrifying sense of menace, capped by a gruesome denouement.

Adopting a gritty newsreel style, Canoa is a daring historical document and a visceral expression of horror.

Presented in Spanish with English subtitles , Criterion’s director-approved new editions include the following:

* New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Felipe Cazals, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* New introduction by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro
* New conversation between filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón and Cazals
* Trailer
* New English subtitle translation
* An essay by critic Fernanda Solórzano