A scorched landscape, violent altercations over access to water, the underclass living in inhospitable conditions — what sounds like the post-apocalyptic world conjured by George Miller in Mad Max: Fury Road is the startlingly bleak vision of contemporary Nicaragua in writer-director Laura Baumeister’s raw feature debut Daughter Of Rage (La Hija de todas las Rabias ). This intimate story of survival is a clear-eyed depiction of the struggles facing the country’s most disadvantaged citizens, but finds its hope for the future in eleven-year-old Maria (Ara Alejandra Medal) whose flinty spirit of resistance refuses to accept that things have to stay the way they are.
Maria lives with her mother Lilibet (Virginia Raquel Sevilla Garcia) in a one-room tin shack on the fringes of a giant landfill. They eke out a living scavenging through mountains of unending waste for items that can be resold or recycled, or breeding puppies to sell from their dog Jauna. They’re part of a tight-knit community, but their livelihood is as tenuous as the landfill is vast, requiring a resiliency that has no quarter for weakness. “Stop being so tender-hearted,” Lilibet admonishes Maria.“If you want something you have to fight for it.” These are lessons that Maria must put into action when she accidentally upends a lucrative deal for Juana’s puppies with a shady buyer, putting her and Lilibet’s lives in danger and forcing them to go on the run.
As Lilibet embarks on a desperate mission to square things, she leaves Maria in the care of Raul (Noé Hernández) and Rosa (Diana Sedano), who put her to work with their group of child laborers, where she’ll earn her keep cleaning electronics components. Defiant and despondent, Maria stays focused on escaping to reunite with her mother. The one person who manages to break through her hardened exterior is Tadeo (Carlos Gutierrez), a young boy who becomes her constant of calm and kindness, while she boils with anger and confusion. They form a friendship bound just as much by hardship as genuine connection, but it only lasts until Maria’s persistence finally opens an avenue to flee.
Working with production designer Marcela Gómez and cinematographer Teresa Kuhn, Baumeister’s confident and candid filmmaking avoids explicit moralizing, and instead lets the dust-caked and sun-bleached images of children climbing hills of trash or using their tiny hands to dismantle toxic metals from discarded appliances speak for themselves. The tone sidesteps lurid exposé, trusting the sturdy, unfussy camerawork to act more as an unblinking witness. Through this lens, the film portrays systemic and generational cycles of poverty, where human lives are disposable and women are particularly vulnerable to violence and assault.
Operating with a potent immediacy, Daughter of Rage vibrates with a fervent sense of injustice. However, it occasionally loses momentum when it slips into metaphorical dream sequences that feel out of step with a film that otherwise works so determinedly to establish a palpable authenticity. This fantastical tendency comes close to rendering the spectral climax unintentionally comical, but it remains tethered to the rest of the picture thanks to the excellent, ethereal score by duo Para One and Arthur Simonini, best known for their terrific work on Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady On Fire.
In her impressive film debut, with a performance that requires carrying the film, Ara Alejandra Medal sensitively captures both Maria’s unshakeable resolve and delicate innocence. Shortly before she disappears, her mother promises to take Maria to see the famed footprints of Acahualinca, some of the earliest evidence of humans to walk the Earth. Maria heartbreakingly asks, “Did they collect trash like we do?” With no perception of what kind of life exists beyond the landfill, how can she conceive of anything else? But Baumeister steadily guides her to a place where one day she can face tomorrow without the need to fight and with room for tenderness in her heart.
Director, screenplay: Laura Baumeister
Cast: Ara Alejandra Medal, Virginia Sevilla, Carlos Gutiérrez, Noé Hernández, Diana Sedano
Producers: Rossana Baumeister, Bruna Haddad, Laura Baumeister, Martha Orozco
Cinematography: Teresa Kuhn
Production design: Marcela Gómez
Editing: Julián Sarmiento, Raúl Barreras
Music: Para One, Arthur Simonini
Sound: Lena Esquenazi, Antonio Diego
Production companies: Felipa Films (Nicaragua), Martfilms (Mexico), Halal (Netherlands), Heimatfilm (Germany), Promenades Films (France), Cardon Pictures (Nicaragua), Dag Hoel Filmproduksjon (Norway), Nephilim Producciones (Spain)
World sales: Best Friend Forever
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Discovery)
In Spanish
90 minutes
