This sombre tale about the clash between religious duty and carnal desire was shot on location in Chihuahua, Mexico. It's set in the Mennonite community, a religious sect of Europeans whose flight from persecution led them to Canada in the 1800s, and then to Mexico in the 1920s. One of their present number is Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr), whose illicit affair with Marianne (Maria Pankratz) is pushing his wife (Miriam Toews) and family towards crisis. As interested in the stately pace of life among the separatist Mennonite communities as Johan's understated crisis of conscience, Mexican film-maker Carlos Reygadas (Battle in Heaven, Japón) lets the drama inch forward at a funereal pace. The film demands patience and rewards with some beautiful moments, not least of all its opening, time-lapse shot of dawn gradually breaking. Yet although it's impossible not to be awed by the confidence of Reygadas's cinematic poetry, the film's pacing and overbearing stillness ultimately proves rather alienating.

Johan and his family are Mennonites from the north of Mexico. Against the law of God and Man, Johan falls in love with another woman.