"When it comes to personal grief, Mexican cinema has the tendency (or the vice, it would be more accurate to say) to lean too heavily towards exaggerated melodrama or, alternatively, towards the most mediocre miserabilism. With Totem (nominated at both the Spirit and Gotham Awards, and awarded at the Morelia Film Festival for both this film and its predecessor, La camarista) Mexican filmmaker Lila Avilés reminds us that there is another path: one of understanding, accepting, and feeling. That is precisely what she invites us to do through the story of Sol (Naíma Sentíes), a young girl who gathers with her family to celebrate her father's (Mateo García) birthday, although he’s too ill to attend his own party. With great scriptwriting skill and a camera both furtive and complicit, Avilés' gaze infiltrates the bittersweet intimacy of a family united by imminent pain, gradually revealing, with compassion, the ways in which each person faces it."