Two near-constant features of “ América ,” an artful, winning documentary directed by Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside, are the mostly contented chirping of birds and the light rustle of wind moving through the trees. They lend a sense of an idyll to a fraught family story that insists on the glory of living even as it shows its title character reconciling herself to the art of dying.

A PBS “POV” documentary that is worth paying to see theatrically, the movie opens in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, after the death of América, who was in her 90s and was the grandmother of three itinerant performers. There, Diego, one of her grandsons, leads a simple life, working in a small circus and hanging out at a local surf shop. “I want to be like the water,” he says in voice-over, as he reclines on a stone barrier separating a road from a beach. In Colima, he says, he felt as if he were drowning.

The film then takes us back in time to that city in western Mexico, to the house where Diego , with his brother Rodrigo and, a little later, the third brother, Bruno (they all appear to be in their 20s), look after their aging grandmother. América has energetic moments but is not entirely spry. When she first sees a camera pointed at her, she asks what that’s all about, and Diego informs her that she’s being recorded. She accepts it with good grace and no questions.