Exactly 499 years after the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs, an unnamed conquistador washes up on the east coast of Mexico as if ejected from a time machine. In his period costume, he treks over the mountains, from Veracruz to Mexico City, the same route Hernán Cortés took to conquer Tenochtitlan.

With its witty, time-traveling premise centered on a returning conquistador, Rodrigo Reyes’s roving hybrid documentary sets off a chain of inquiry into the dark history that colonialism wrought on the Mexican landscape. In 499, whimsical and satirical flights of fancy encase a seed of bitter truth.