Mexican film-maker Fernanda Valadez’s piercing feature debut is a sensitive exploration of her country’s missing persons crisis. Some 70,000 people have disappeared in Mexico in the past 15 years, and so Valadez reframes a faceless problem as a series of intersecting human stories.
Single mother Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández) is able to identify her missing son’s bag but not his body. Unwilling to pronounce him dead, she searches for him across desolate landscapes, guided by recent deportee Miguel (David Illescas). A sunrise stains a lake pink, a violent flashback is blurry and unsubtitled; Valadez’s expressionist images give texture to the abstract emotions of rage and pain.
