Supernatural

Ventura Durall's documentary "Supernatural" begins with a seemingly impossible premise: a young girl on the brink of death, medical science at its limits, and a distant healer who allegedly saved her life through telepathic intervention. From this extraordinary starting point, the film unfolds into a rich exploration of belief, family trauma, and human complexity.

The documentary follows Anna Alarcón, now a well-known Spanish actress, as she seeks to understand the man who she believes saved her life when she was 8 years old. Suffering from severe anorexia and attached to feeding tubes, young Anna seemed beyond medical help when her desperate parents contacted André Malby, a respected shaman. Without ever seeing Anna, Malby performed some ritual and sent medicinal powder, after which Anna began to recover. Decades later, her conviction in this miraculous intervention remains unshakable.

Durall masterfully structures the film around Anna's search for answers about the now-deceased Malby, a journey that leads her to his estranged son, Mathu. The contrast between them couldn't be more striking – Anna, the devoted believer in Malby's supernatural powers, and Mathu, a conventional doctor who rejected his father's path so completely that he pursued a career in orthodox medicine. Their confrontation becomes the film's narrative engine, though Durall wisely offers no simplistic resolution to the science-versus-spirituality debate, suggesting instead that both can coexist.

What makes "Supernatural" a true joy are the deeper layers of humanity exposed in the telling of this story. It's a film about closure and unresolved emotional burdens. Mathu left home at 18 and never returned, carrying his rejection of his father like a weight for decades. There's a famous Zen Buddhist parable about the great monk Tanzan and his disciple encountering a woman who cannot cross a stream. Tanzan carries her across, and later when his disciple criticizes this breaking of monastic rule...