A family drives along a dreamlike Mexican highway in this excerpt of Carlos Reygedas’ poetic new film Post Tenebras Lux. His forthcoming release, which won him Best Director at the 65th Cannes Film Festival, follows Juan and Natalia—played by Adolfo Jiménez Castro and Nathalia Acevedo—and their two children as they navigate the surreal and intimate conflicts of upper-middle class life. The kids asleep in the back of the car are the director’s own daughter Eleazer and son Rut, and their appearance forms part of Regeydas’ philosophy of exploiting elements of his domestic reality. “It’s my house and my children and everyone I know,” says Reygadas, who used his mountainside abode in the state of Morelos, 100km south of Mexico City, as the primary location during the four-month filming period. “I just took what is dear to me—I like to open the doors so you can look inside.” Reygadas’ first feature Japón received a special mention for the Caméra d’Or Award at Cannes in 2002 and his last full-length film Silent Light won the Jury Award there in 2007. His latest work eschews traditional storytelling conventions and instead offers up beautifully shot and striking scenes that work on their own or as part of a quixotic assemblage. “If you want to categorize it I would say it is a cognitive film rather than a narrative one,” says the filmmaker. “It is about the perception of reality, not the present conscious—the way we feel life.” 

How much of what happens in the film is based on your life?
Carlos Reygedas: It is not a recreation of my life, but a recreation of a lot of thoughts. Imagine you could connect some electrodes to your brain while you slept and saw the results the next morning on the television. I wanted to share what I have been living through, what I have felt, what I have thought—what is subconscious in my life. 

Was using your own house and the surrounding Mexican countryside as a film set a difficult decision?
CR: We are programmed to be shallow and because of that we think intimacy resides in very elementary things like a bedroom, or even in our underwear drawer. Some people never show those things to others because they are private, whereas a bedroom is only walls with a bed. I wasn’t afraid to do that, so I didn’t need to be brave. For me intimacy resides somewhere else. 

The opening scene features your daughter lost in the wilderness at dusk, surrounded by dogs. Was that tough to shoot?
CR: No more than anything else. It took maybe five or six afternoons as it had to be shot in the light of dusk. There were eight dogs in the scene—I have ten and we used them all in the film, so I was the animal wrangler on set! That’s why they seem so well behaved. All filmmakers should do this. Instead of inventing some strange story, why don’t we make a film about what we know?

Post Tenebras Lux is showing in UK cinemas from March 22 and in the US from May 1.