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Synopsis

Using state of the art digital filmmaking, “gorgeous time lapse sequences” (NY Newsday), and a “terrific soundtrack’ (Time Out) made of a “magical montage of found sounds” (Chicago Sun-Times), Juan Carlos Rulfo’s In the Pit is a powerful documentary about the personal struggles behind the construction of a massive elevated freeway. With lyricisim and compassion, this Sundance Film Festival prize-winning film reveals the medieval nightmare underneath an ambitious utopian dream: Mexico City’s Periferico Beltway, more than ten miles of elevated reinforced concrete, supported by massive towers, that has been planned to both soar above and link the city’s densely gridlocked urban neighborhoods. But while the roadway is a spectacular miracle of modern architectural design, it comes with a human cost. For every bridge built, warns a Mexican proverb, the devil demands one soul. Even in contemporary Mexico, “any major construction project needs a soul in its foundation,” agrees one of In The Pit’s army of laborers tunneling beneath the surface and scaling the perilous heights of La Cuidad to ensure that “the Second Deck” becomes a reality. Physically diminutive yet implacably committed, El Chavelo doggedly faces each moment of every filthy, risky, and exhausting day with calm and resignation. His colleague El Grande is a rough-hewn and misanthropic mason as carelessly unafraid of indulging his dark personal demons as he is of facing the perils of both the pit and the towers. El Guapo wistfully longs for love, while El Voyeur propositions women from hundreds of feet in the air. A film of “unlikely beauty” (Variety), In the Pit lays bare “the secret human face of an inhuman world” (NY Times).