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Photographs

Frames from the film in the order it tells its story, the shoot at La Puerta del Diablo and in the streets, the premiere weekend in Suchitoto, and the posters and papers the film collected on its way around the world.

Crew members in silhouette work at the foot of a cliff, one shouldering a camera, with open sky and distant hills behind them.

From the film

Carlos Mauricio, in glasses, a blue shirt and a dark jacket, speaks to the camera in a dim room, light falling across one side of his face. — Carlos Mauricio, interviewed in Washington, D.C., for the film.

Seen through an open window wall, four people gather around a table in a room with pale textured walls: a man in a hat, a woman standing beside him, an older man resting his head on his hand, and a young man. — Home from Mexico: Mauricio, at left, with his sister and his brothers. “But why did you come back?” one of them asks.

A man in a hat and wire-rimmed glasses smiles across a table; a woman standing behind him rests a hand on his shoulder, and an older man sits in the foreground. — “I could have stayed. It would have been easy to stay. But I missed you all a lot.”

An older man in an olive shirt smiles in the foreground at the right; behind him a man in a hat and glasses sits at a table while a woman rests both hands on his shoulders. — Jorge Ávalos, right, as Rufino, the older brother, with Mauricio and their sister at the family table.

Mauricio with his sister and brothers on the day he comes home.

A young woman in large glasses and a patterned scarf smiles from behind a red typewriter, against a pale green brick wall; a vase of red flowers stands on the desk. — The rector’s office at the university. “Engineer, you’ve come back from Mexico.”

Two men stand against a green wall: a balding man in black-rimmed glasses, a striped shirt and a tie, arms crossed, and a man in aviator glasses and a blue shirt who looks down as he speaks. — Mauricio, right, with Antonio, his boss at the university, waiting to see the rector.

In an office with pale green brick walls, a gray-haired man in a dark suit and red tie shakes hands with a man in a blue shirt while two other men greet each other; a secretary watches from her desk. — “Doctor, how are you? Nice to see you.” The rector has no time for them: the finance minister has called.

A man in a hat and glasses sits at the wheel of a dusty tan sedan with a Salvadoran license plate, parked in dappled shade. — Mauricio at the wheel of the car Antonio has lent him.

A young woman in a navy jacket over a pink plaid shirt looks intently at a man whose shoulder is in the foreground, a sunlit lawn behind her. — María de los Ángeles, the friend he has been warned to keep away from. “Stop following me,” she says, “and don’t call me Maria.”

A man with a mustache and goatee, in a cap with a pink brim and a blue shirt, smiles at a dark-haired woman seen from behind. — “You don’t want to see me?” Mauricio asks her.

A man in aviator glasses and a sweater vest laughs at a candlelit table, a brick wall in shadow behind him. — Dinner at María’s house. “I’m violating the security code, because of you,” she tells him.

Very close on a woman’s smiling face in deep red light, most of the frame in darkness. — María, by candlelight.

Three students at their desks look up toward the front of a classroom: a young man in a denim shirt, a young woman in a white T-shirt, and a bearded man behind them. — His students. “There are so few in this class,” someone says. “With the situation, it’s not surprising.”

Close on a man in gold-rimmed aviator glasses, with a mustache and a green shirt, looking past the camera with a guarded expression. — Mauricio at the university. He is just back from a master’s degree in Mexico; the men looking for him say he was in Cuba.

A heavyset man in a dark shirt and a khaki vest looks straight into the camera from a low angle, against a bare pale wall. — One of the men in plain clothes. To them the professor is “the Cuban.”

The heavyset man in the vest rests his chin on his fist, a heavy watch on his wrist, and stares off to the right under sunlit trees. — Watching. “We’ve been following you for a month,” an interrogator tells Mauricio later.

A balding man in glasses and a pale blue shirt holds a sheaf of papers under the trees of a campus and looks warily at a man whose back is to the camera. — On campus, one of the men stops a professor to ask about “that guy that just arrived from Cuba.”

A man in a black vest over a brown T-shirt speaks intently to someone in the foreground, sunlit trees behind him. — The reverse angle. “I told you, he’s not an engineer.”

A soldier in a camouflage uniform and cap stares at a man in a green shirt whose shoulder fills the foreground. — Mauricio, in the green shirt, face to face with a soldier.

A curly-haired student in a black-and-cream striped shirt stands and speaks while classmates seated on a stairway look up at him. — After their professor is taken, his students set about getting him out: tell his family, find a lawyer, go to the rector. One holds back. “If he’s not guilty, why won’t they let him go?”

A man in a green shirt lifts his face to the sun while a hand grips his collar; behind him a crag stands in sharp focus above a hazy valley, and lens flares are strung across the frame. — At the edge of La Puerta del Diablo: Oscar Suncín as Carlos Mauricio, in the grip of his captors.

Extreme close-up of a man’s face in warm backlight: his eyes are closed, and a lens flare glows across the bridge of his nose. — Oscar Suncín at the cliff’s edge, eyes shut, the sun flaring in the lens.

The interrogation. “I’m not going to say anything,” Mauricio told them, “because dead men can’t talk.”

A bunch of red, pink and white flowers fills the frame; a hand rests at the right edge. — “How much for the flowers?” “50 cents a piece.” Outside the walls, an ordinary afternoon.

A boy in a green T-shirt looks down at the flowers he is selling, with trees and a tiled roof out of focus behind him. — The boy selling them asks a girl where she studies. “What about you?” she says. “I’m not studying.”

A girl with long dark hair smiles shyly in sunlight, a garden out of focus behind her. — “I’m in a nun school,” the girl tells him.

Two small figures walk along a wide, empty beach beside a pale, glittering sea. — Mexico, after his release: Mauricio and María on the beach. She died in combat after going back to El Salvador.

Carlos Mauricio lowers his eyes in the middle of his interview, half of his face in shadow. — Mauricio during the interview that runs through the film.

On location, January 2018

A camera operator films three actors from an arm’s length away while a boom microphone hangs over them; a valley and a town lie far below. — Director of photography Michael Potter films the scene at La Puerta del Diablo in which Mauricio’s captors threaten to throw him from the cliff. January 2018.

Seven members of the production stand on whitewashed stone steps under a rock face, with a camera rig and a clapperboard. — Cast and crew on the stone steps below the rocks, January 2018.

A camera operator in a cap, seen from behind, leans out over the drop with the camera; a colleague grips the back of his waistband. — The camera operator leans out over the drop while a colleague holds him by the waistband.

Seen from behind, the performers stand on a rocky outcrop above a wide valley while a boom microphone reaches in from the top of the frame. — The boom over the actors at the edge of La Puerta del Diablo, January 2018.

Members of the crew stand in a tree-lined street in front of a pale building; the hood of a tan car shows at lower left. — The crew on a street location during the shoot.

Over the shoulder of a figure in a dark hooded top and knit cap, a man in a green shirt stands at the edge above a hazy valley and a rock face. — The edge at La Puerta del Diablo, as the actors saw it.

Crew members on a steep hillside above the valley; one wears a camera harness, another a cap and dark glasses. — The crew on the hillside between takes.

Crew members in silhouette work at the foot of a cliff, one shouldering a camera, with open sky and distant hills behind them. — The crew works a shot against the rock face.

At night a camera operator in a cap frames an actor in glasses who stands beside an old pale sedan. — Night shoot: an actor waits beside a period car.

A camera operator wearing a support vest and arm stands in a curving, tree-lined street, seen from behind. — A camera operator in a support rig on a street location.

A young man in a green shirt holds a bunch of white flowers beside a woman carrying red ones, while a camera operator films from the right. — Filming the flower scene in the plaza.

In the foreground a cinema camera points across a stone plaza toward a bench under an orange umbrella. — The camera waits on a town plaza while a scene is set, January 2018.

Actors with rifles surround a man in a green shirt whose hands are raised; a boom microphone hangs overhead and two buses are parked behind them. — Filming a street scene: armed men close in on a man in a green shirt. Photo: Gaceta Suchitoto

Suchitoto, November 2018

Lawrence Justin Mills stands in front of the painted Guazapa Café mural, beside a banner for El Camino de la Sombra. — Producer Lawrence Justin Mills at Guazapa Café in Suchitoto on the premiere weekend, November 2018.

Seven people stand together on the grass beside the carved wooden Guazapa Café sign. — Outside Guazapa Café on the premiere weekend, November 2018.

Four people stand close together on the lawn outside the café, smiling; the eldest, at left, wears round glasses and a black shirt. — Director Baltazar López with guests on the premiere weekend in Suchitoto, November 2018.

Oscar Suncín and Lawrence Justin Mills stand on either side of the Spanish-language banner for the film. — Oscar Suncín, who plays Carlos Mauricio, with producer Justin Mills at the Suchitoto premiere.

Francisco Yazbek gives a thumbs-up beside the film banner; Lawrence Justin Mills stands on the right. — Francisco Yazbek, who plays the instructor, with Justin Mills at the Suchitoto premiere.

Three men stand side by side inside the green-walled café under a hanging lamp; one wears a straw hat. — Paolo Hasbún, who recorded the film’s sound, Justin Mills and Oscar Suncín at Guazapa Café on the premiere weekend.

Posters and papers

Baltazar López, standing at right, speaks to rows of seated officers, many of them in uniform, in a bright hall. — Director Baltazar López speaks with officers at the Academia Nacional de Seguridad Pública after a screening of the film.

Certificate of the Diamond Film Awards, January 2019: Best Actor, presented to Oscar Suncín for “The Path of the Shadows,” signed by the president and dated January 31, 2019. — Oscar Suncín’s Best Actor certificate from the Diamond Film Awards, dated January 31, 2019.

Poster for El Camino de la Sombra: the cliff scene above the title, the credits for producer Justin Mills and director Baltazar López, and the festival dates. — The Suchitoto premiere poster: a showing every day at 2 p.m., November 10 to 17, 2018. Photo: Gaceta Suchitoto

Poster for The Path of the Shadows, the English title set between two amber-toned images. — The English-language poster.

Poster for a screening of The Path of the Shadows on Saturday, February 23, in the auditorium of the MUNA museum in San Salvador, with ticket prices. — San Salvador, February 23, 2019: the poster for the screening at the national anthropology museum.

Poster announcing The Path of the Shadows at the Festival de Cine Europeo del Sur in Valencia on May 9, 2019, at noon, with an Official Selection laurel. — Valencia, May 9, 2019. The poster carries the official-selection laurel of the South Europe International Film Festival.

Poster for The Path of the Shadows at the Providence Latin American Film Festival, September 20 to 28, between a night view of Providence and a full theater. — The film’s poster for the Providence Latin American Film Festival, September 20 to 28, 2019.

Poster for The Path of the Shadows at Oaxaca FilmFest, October 4 to 10, under a photograph of a colonial church. — The film’s poster for Oaxaca FilmFest, October 4 to 10, 2019.

Lineup poster of the 15th Latin American Film Festival in Australia, a grid of film posters by country, with El Salvador’s entry, The Path of the Shadows, outlined in yellow. — The 2019 lineup of the Latin American Film Festival in Australia, with El Salvador’s entry outlined.

Part of a letter that begins “Dear Justin and Baltazar” and says the festival has chosen The Path of the Shadows as an Official Selection of the 27th Providence Latin American Film Festival. — From the festival’s letter to Justin Mills and Baltazar López: an official selection, in a year of “more than 2,000 entries.”

More photographs on IMDb