Prayers for the Stolen

Mexico's official entry to 2022's Oscars is simple and slow-paced yet so emotional and tough. The story is heartbreaking, moving, flows smoothly and delivers so much feelings without any forced efforts. Performances are solid and real. Cinematography is stunning. It's not everyone's cup of tea though.

Watching this movie reminded me of the blurry photographs of British children playing in the ruins of London during the Blitz. If a building were bombed today, the unsafe structure would be guarded by cops to keep the children from being buried in the rubble. But, when the city is being bombed every night, what's the difference in whether a child dies from bombíng or under a pile of loose bricks? War brings death and death becomes normal.

In the bucolic and gorgeous mountains of Jalisco, war is constant and unending. Flickering fire flies have been replaced by the lights of cell phones as villagers try desperately to get a call "to the other side" for money to leave. Staying means enslavement to the cartel and losing your daughters to brutal sex trafficking. Instead of bombs, the cartels and the useless police rain terror on the adults in the village. Everyone knows a dead girl, and everyone knows how to harvest opium. And everyone knows to run when the US helps Mexico spray chemicals on the poppy crops.

Yet, just as the London kids entertained themselves with soccer, school, story telling and friendships, so too do the children in the village in Jalisco. What terrifies their parents simply is business as usual to them. They can't help growing up in war, but they are growing up. They want to dance, go to rodeos, date - every day things that are death defying in Jalisco.

It's an excellent movie about how the human spirit survives the unthinkable.

I want to tie Americans to chairs to help them understand exactly what American drug habits, the War on Drugs and the crisis in Central America is doing to desperate, terrified people. I want them to understand that they aren't coming heee for handouts. I want them to understand that they are coming here to stay alive. I want them to see children burned with American pesticides.

The acting is astonishing, the cinematography brilliant and the story heartbreaking. And this story happens every day in Mexico.

Yikes but this is quite a difficult film to watch. It's centred around three teenage girls who live amidst the poppy fields of Mexico. "Ana" (Maria Membreño) "Paula" (Alejandro Camacho) and "Maria" (Giselle Barrera Sánchez) try to live their lives as normally as they can, but the fact that their school teacher is leaving because he won't pay protection money to the drug pedlars gives us some indication of the society in which they live. Indeed, it's this teacher who raises the issue of a missing girl - and that enlightens us to the fact that once they reach a certain age, these young women have other "uses" and nobody dares speak out about it. The chronology flits between the current life of these three and their younger childhood and illustrates that for them, there is little hope of change unless they are prepared to leave - but that they don't want to do with out each other or their mothers (the fathers don't feature at all in this drama). The rather courageous role of motherhood is really well exemplified by Mayra Batalla's contribution as "Rita". A woman who treats her daughters first menstruation with a dread that the young girl does not yet appreciate the significance of. It's a beautifully photographed vicious circle, with the emphasis on vicious. There are attempts at government interventions, local troops stationed and helicopters depositing toxins on the flowers, but the thrust here from director Tatiana Huezo is of a cycle of depressing and dangerous inevitability that it is difficult to see a way out of. The three young actors perform evocatively here offering us quite emotional and poignant characterisations. They are not simply going to give up - but it's not that simple. Harrowing, yes, but it's clearly been written and presented offering hope for the girls and to raise some awareness of the fact that as long as the West keeps buying the stuff, these people will live in a modern day slavery that turns your stomach.

Anna, Paula and Maria are three young girls growing up in a remote mountain town in the Mexican rainforest. Poppies are grown locally and harvested by the townspeople controlled by the Cartels. Life is precarious and the balance of power between Police, Cartel and Military is tenuous at best. This is impeccable Social Realist film with many captivating performances from non actors. If you like the genre you will like this one. 8/10.

Horror, even the weird and most brutal films are just that, scary films. Noche de Fuego, based on Jeniffer Clement's "Prayers for the Stolen" is a radical departure from films that tackle the world of drugs and its consequences. Tatiana Huezo's film is an introspective into the life of three children as they grow in a world of violence in the mountains of Mexico where most people work in the world of opium harvesting. Harrowing and crude, the film goes into the depths of humanity, seen from the eyes of three young girls who fear the possible threats of only "living" as kids. The performances are stunning. The casting is superb. The DP created a visual masterpiece. With Tati at the helm, this rollercoaster of a film, will keep you nailed to your seat as it will be engraved in your mind for years to come. At Cannes, the film had wild reviews but, above all, an audience who couldn't believe what they experienced through the first Festival that chose it. A complete success!