New film of Juan Rulfo’s revered novel, considered founding text of magic realism, is first film adaptation in half a century

“I came to Comala because I was told that my father lived here, a certain Pedro Páramo.”

Many Mexicans know the first sentence of Juan Rulfo’s revered novel, Pedro Páramo, by heart. This week they will hear it on Netflix, with the release of the first film adaptation in almost 50 years of the text that inspired Gabriel García Márquez to write One Hundred Years of Solitude.