This 50th anniversary restoration of Margot Benacerraf’s brilliant 1959 tone poem Araya is a dazzling revelation from the Venezuelan cinema. Boasting a stunning richness of image, sheer poetry of sound and visuals, it shows a profound respect for the people of Araya, an arid peninsula in the country’s northeast.

The film portrays a day in the life of three families living in Araya, one of the harshest places on earth. For 450 years, the region’s salt was manually collected and stacked into glowing white pyramids. Benacerraf captures the grueling work of these salineros in breathtaking high-contrast black-and-white images. The Pereda family toils all night in the salt marshes. In the morning, the Salaz clan arrives to load and stack the crystals under the hot brutal sun. Down the coastline, the Ortiz family fish and tend their nets, while the youngest member, Carmen, collects seashells and coral.

Meticulously planned as a composition in which cinematography, music, sound and language combine to create a moving and magical exploration of a desolate place and the remarkable people who lived there, Araya won the International Critics’ Prize at the1959 Cannes Film Festival.