Cabeza de Vaca is based on the travel memoirs of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, the sixteenth-century Spanish explorer who, shipwrecked in the Americas, spent eight years traveling on foot encountering diverse Native American cultures. This mystical and tragic epic film traverses Shakespearean territory, suggesting a retelling of The Tempest: Cabeza de Vaca becomes both Caliban and Prospero when he frees himself from tribal captivity by learning the magical healing powers of the tribe's sorcerer. Director Nicholas Echevarria relies mostly on his strong command of visual rhetoric to tell the story. The hallucinatory imagery appropriately recalls Apocalypse Now: fluid camerawork and editing, long, almost silent takes, and evocative filtered lighting transform the New World into a dreamscape. Cabeza de Vaca became a visionary shaman and re-visionist in his own time, as a witness to the genocidal atrocities of the conquistadores-the apocalypse then.