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It is a morbid tradition of children’s fiction that parents must often be dispatched, as quickly and unsentimentally as possible, for the adventure to proceed — sometimes discreetly, or sometimes, as in Roald Dahl’s “James and the Giant Peach,” as violently as a rhinoceros attack in paragraph two. In storybook logic, such eliminations often enable a blithe sense of liberty for young protagonists; for the five siblings at the center of “The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box),” the disappearance of their parents cues a gradual collapse of reality as they know it, more frightening than freeing. Occupying an eerie, agitated middle ground between realism and unanchored dream logic, Mexican director Ernesto Martínez Bucio’s striking, deliciously titled debut effectively plunges its audience into child’s-eye confusion, without the safety net of an omniscient perspective.

Elliptical in its storytelling, but often piercingly precise in...

The title and synopsis of Mexican director, screenwriter and editor Ernesto Martínez Bucio‘s feature directorial debut sure sound ominous. The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box), or El Diablo Fuma (y guarda las cabezas de los cerillos quemados en la misma caja), gets its world premiere in the new Perspectives section of the 75th edition of the Berlin Film Festival on Saturday.

Promising “a journey back into the magical world of childhood,” the film, set in Mexico City in the mid-1990s, portrays sibling relationships and the formation of fear that is passed on from one generation to another. And it has a “supernatural” tag on the Berlin festival website.

“After the sudden disappearance of their parents, five siblings are left in the care of their grandmother, a synopsis reads. “As they struggle to survive, the line between reality and something darker begins to blur.