El Rey lies on the narrow strip between the Nichupte lagoon and the Caribbean, in what is now the hotel zone of Cancun. It is the largest of the city's archaeological sites, and its plan is unusually legible: two parallel rows of structures flanking a central avenue, with plazas, low platforms and a small temple whose walls still carry traces of their original treatment. Occupied in the late pre-Hispanic period, the settlement belonged to a Maya coastal network engaged in maritime exchange and in the movement of goods and pilgrims along the eastern shore of the Yucatan. The site takes its name from a sculpted figure interpreted as a ruler. Today iguanas colonise every wall and platform, and the film uses them as the site's living presence, while aerial shots set the ruins against the towers and beaches that surround them. A compact, well-defined archaeology title, filmed in 4K.
