Carlos Reygadas is returning to feature filmmaking after eight years, and his comeback has already secured an international sales partner. Paris-based mk2 films has acquired international sales rights to Heil Jupiter! ahead of its world premiere at the 64th New York Film Festival. The deal puts the spotlight on a film that has taken an unusually long route to the screen, following Reygadas’ last feature, Our Time, which arrived in 2018.
The eight-year gap is significant because Reygadas has remained an important figure in contemporary Mexican cinema despite the long wait between features. His filmography includes Japón, Battle in Heaven, Silent Light, Post Tenebras Lux and Our Time. Rather than simply marking a return, Heil Jupiter! brings him back with a project that has itself undergone a long journey.
The film was first announced under another title, Wake of Umbra, around eight years ago. It has since emerged as Heil Jupiter!, giving the project an interesting history before audiences have even seen it. The production was also filmed across Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Norway and Sweden, making it an international collaboration in both its development and locations.
Its story is equally unusual. Set around a remote coastline of crashing waves and monumental rock formations, Heil Jupiter! follows two young couples who enter a world of shifting realities. A mysterious entity watches them from above, while the film moves between the modern and the primitive, the high-tech and the rural. The result is a story that connects physical surroundings with more mythical ideas.
The film is also notable for its scale. Heil Jupiter! runs for 150 minutes, or two and a half hours, and is presented in an invented language and Spanish with English subtitles. Those details make clear that Reygadas is not returning with a conventional drama built around a familiar structure. The official festival description also places authoritarian brutality alongside the film’s more dreamlike elements, adding another serious thread to its unusual setting.
Reygadas’ festival history helps explain why this return carries weight. Silent Light won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007, while Post Tenebras Lux earned Reygadas the Best Director award at Cannes in 2012. His films have repeatedly occupied a space between narrative cinema and more experimental forms, making Heil Jupiter! a natural continuation of a career built around unusual filmmaking choices.
The new film will have its world premiere in the Currents section of the 64th New York Film Festival, which runs from September 25 to October 12, 2026. This also brings Reygadas back to a festival with which he already has a connection: Silent Light screened there in 2007. The new film is therefore returning him not only to features, but also to a significant chapter in his festival history.
What makes the current sales announcement especially timely is that mk2 films has come on board just as Heil Jupiter! approaches its first public screening. The deal gives the film an international sales partner while keeping attention on its upcoming New York premiere rather than a later theatrical date.
For Reygadas, the road from Wake of Umbra to Heil Jupiter! has taken years, crossed five countries and followed an eight-year break from feature filmmaking. Now, with its New York premiere ahead, the film arrives as a distinctive return: not simply a new title in Reygadas’ career, but a project whose unusual journey is almost as interesting as the film itself.
