Once in a while, we ask ourselves the question of what happens to us when we pass away. Mauro Colombo asks that question during a stage in his life when he encounters the deaths of two people. The latter encounter is particularly haunting because Colombo temporarily brings the person back to life only to die again.Those close and uncomfortable encounters is the violent seed from which his new documentary, Wild Gleaming Space, grows. Here, he goes back and forth from his new home in Panama to certain countries in Western Europe. In those places, he talks to scientists as well as people who have had close brushes with the afterlife.

Death is a broad subject matter, so it’s understandable for Colombo to look at it from different perspectives. Some methods are better than others, like choosing a younger white Panamanian to discuss his experiences with death. But other moments in Wild Gleaming Space feel digressive, like what’s the point of the clarinet player in a doc about death? Some of the interviews feel like they go on for too long while others get to the point. The interviews that are like the latter, however, feel like he could have had a deeper conversation with them.

I feel bad for writing bad things about personal work like Wild Gleaming Space, but tough. Aesthetically, it’s beautiful, as it shows the different seasons of the landscapes in Panama, a country we barely see in documentaries. Colombo uses these shots of landscapes and juxtaposes them with his subjects’ narrations about life’s mysteries. Ok, so what does this mean, like death helps people reconnect with God and nature, that it speaks in ways we can’t? This documentary is already about an unexplored science, I’m gonna need more meat than this.