The small village tucked in the mountains of Mexico where little Ana and her friends play mind-reading games might have been the ideal place for children to grow up, had it not been for the presence of the ruthless, weaponized narcos who oversee the harvesting of poppies for the drug cartels. And they have a bad habit of kidnapping pretty girls and using their bodies until they die. This is the background fearsomely painted by Mexican writer-director Tatiana Huezo, who makes her dazzling feature debut with the unforgettable Prayers for the Stolen (Noche de fuego). After its special mention in Cannes’ Certain Regard this year, it took the best film prize in San Sebastian’s highly competitive Latin Horizons section.
Played by convincing young actors cast from village children who have actually grown up with the scourge of the drug cartels, rape and murder, it ranks alongside the finest films about childhood and is an art house gem not to miss this year.
Displaying the same intensity and concision (every shot counts and none are expendable) as Jennifer Clement’s novel on which it is based, the drama unfolds piecemeal, in the nooks and crannies of childhood where small Ana (the self-possessed, gifted Ana Cristina Ordonez Gonzalez) lives in an isolated house with her tough mother Rita (a very convincing Mayra Batalla). The latter has become a single mom since her husband went away to find work and never came back, though she and Ana hold out hope and spend evenings (like many villagers) on a hill trying to get a cell phone signal that would let them talk to Daddy. The men who have stayed in the area work like ghostly zombies in a mammoth rock quarry shaken by bulldozers and explosions. There are even young boys covered in white powder who do a man’s job in this dangerous place.
Rita, who cleans other people’s houses for a living, is not only practical but foresighted. An early scene shows her digging what seems to be a grave in the back yard for Ana, but it is really a hiding spot to which the girl must hurriedly retreat in case the drug traffickers in their powerful SUVs decide to drive up the hillside to abduct her. Already as a child she has seen her friend Juana disappear from a neighbor’s home. Can her mother protect her? No one trusts the police or the soldiers in camouflage uniforms, who on rare occasions exchange fire with the narcos. Huezo ensures that the violence occurs off screen, but still ably communicates the terror of these families fighting for existence as a living hell.
At the same time, Daniela Ludlow’s clear and revealing cinematography plays no shadow games with what is happening in the village. Through the girls’ innocent eyes, homes are burned to the ground, armed men in trucks terrorize the village, their beloved schoolteachers stop coming to the village out of fear. Yet it is also a place of wonder, and the girls seem fully integrated into the tropical forests and the natural world that surrounds them, even co-existing with poisonous snakes and scorpions, in a magical world of their own.
Their mothers take them to the local hair salon and in a beautifully sensitive scene that captures their humiliation, their long hair, a symbol of freedom and womanhood, is hacked off and replaced by a short boy’s cut. Ana (played now by the serious-faced and extremely touching Marya Membrano) doesn’t cry like Paula. Only Maria, whose face is disfigured by a cleft lip, is allowed to retain her hair for the moment.
Then we realize that time has passed. The girls might be around 12 now, and as anomalous as it looks for a girl with a clearly developing body to have a boy’s face, the three are still females. Huezo subtly brings this out in the liberating scene of a nighttime rodeo, where Ana’s childhood pal Margherito wins kudos for his bravery and skill and obviously impresses her in a boy-girl way. Unfortunately, he works for the traffickers, and it turns out to be a very bad decision.
Yet it is the film’s moving portrait of childhood friendship we remember, and the final scenes are heart-wrenching in their implication.
Director: Tatiana Huezo
Screenwriter: Tatiana Huezo based on a novel by Jennifer Clement
Cast: Ana Cristina Ordonez Gonzalez, Marya Membrano, Mayra Batalla
Producers: Nicolas Celis, Jim Stark, Michael Weber, Viola Fugen, Rachel Daisy Ellis, Burkhard Althoff, Joslyn Barnes, Helmut Dosantos, Danny Glover, Doris Hepp, Susan Rockefeller, Dan Wehsler, Jamal Zeinal Zade
Cinematography: Daniela Ludlow
Production design: Oscar Tello
Editing: Miguel Schverdfinger
Music: Jacobo Lieberman, Leonardo Heiblum
Production companies: Pimienta Films (Mexico), Match Factory Productions (Germany), Desvia Producoes (Brazil), Bord Cadre Films (Switzerland), Cactus Film & Video (Mexico), Jaque Content (Argentina), Louverture Films (US)
World sales: Match Factory
Venue: San Sebastian Film Festival (Horizontes Latinos)
110 minutes
