Children occupy a special place at the Berlinale, which rolls around every year in Brandenburg during frosty February. Unlike many other top-tier competition film festivals, Berlin provides a whole strand, Generation – divided into ‘Kplus’ and ‘14plus’ – devoted to films about the world of die kinder. Though crafted by adults, these works have a certain sympathy with the world view of those much younger.

In 2023, at the seventy-third edition of the festival, children also had pride of place in Berlin’s main competition. The coveted Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance went to its youngest ever recipient, nine-year-old Sofía Otero, for her role as trans girl Lucía, in Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s 20,000 Species of Bees. (Another Spanish coming-of-age film featuring bee-keeping to rival my favourite The Spirit of the Beehive.)

Another child-focused film in competition for the Golden Bear last year was Tótem, a modest but often powerful sophomore feature from Mexican filmmaker Lila Avilés. Here, the centre of our attention is Sol (Naíma Sentíes), aged seven, whose terminally ill father, Tona (Mateo García Elizondo) is about to celebrate what may well be his final birthday. Sol’s aunts, Nuri (Montserrat Mariñón) and Alejandra (Marisol Gasé), are throwing a party for Tona at the home of the young girl’s grandfather Roberto (Alberto Amador). Amid all the hustle and bustle, with relatives and visitors coming and going, Sol is given to wondering openly about the fate of the world – a question she puts to a smart phone – and about how much time her father has left.

It is fair to say that many films revolving around child protagonists are fêted for the strong performances of their young leads. Child actors have the capacity to surprise us by speaking wisdom beyond their years, or simply by holding up a mirror to the adult world. Given that Sentíes has pride of place on the marketing materials for Tótem, I had expected that the film would stand or fall in part on her acting ability, and how it might hold the audience’s interest.

Cast of Tótem (photograph by Lila Avilés).

What we have is something quite different. While we begin and end with Sol, for much of the film’s duration she is absent from the frame and we see instead the strange behaviour of the adults whose space she shares. When she is on screen, Sol is quite reserved, a marked contrast to some of the histrionic mannerisms of her elders: her frustrated grandfather speaking through an electrolarynx; a spirit medium theatrically exorcising the demons of the house; her aunts arguing about excessive drinking and party logistics. Sol is the calm yin to the chaotic yang of the household.

But Aviles does something more inventive with her young charge: when Sol isn’t front and centre, the girl functions almost as a kind of surrogate for the camera itself, registering with wide-eyed innocence all of the strange events and people that pass through her orbit. Although not always seen from Sol’s point of view, the world of the film is presented to us with a sense of wonderment or even misunderstanding that is clearly filtered through her youthful mind and vision. I am not sure this gambit works entirely, as the partial perspective we are given shifts rather abruptly at the end, with a pay-off of sorts. But it’s a fascinating approach to a story that is really about the imminent death of Sol’s father and the reverberations this will have for his loved ones.

In this vein, what is also striking about the set-up of the film is the way that Sol’s place in the family resembles her father’s. One is just starting out in the world, while the other will soon exit it, but each is more or less relegated to the position of observer. Decisions about their lives are made by others on their behalf, both are often absent from the action, and Sol is not allowed into her father’s bedroom until late in the piece.

This is not to say that Sol has no will of her own. Beyond her patient enquiries about the state of her father’s health, she reveals a more tempestuous side of her personality when she angrily knocks down a drone that is filming her during her father’s party. We are also left with an unexpected shot of the young girl in the penultimate scene, where her unblinking gaze straight down the camera serves as a reminder that Sol has been taking in everything around her, and that we should take her seriously too.

Aside from a short opening passage in which her mother (Iauza Larios) drives her to her grandfather’s place, the action of Tótem is localised entirely in the patriarch’s home, with tight framing and a narrow aspect ratio lending a claustrophobic air to proceedings. The house does not lend itself to wide shots, with the camera instead wending its way into awkward nooks and crannies: under the dining table, in a storage cupboard, through a crowded hallway. But these are spaces in which a child might find solace from the hubbub of the adult world, and give us the chance to see the world through younger eyes.

Tótem (Hi Gloss Entertainment) is screening nationally from 25 July 2024.