Sans signe particulier

This is a very good movie with great production values, an excellent cast, and some very good performances. But it's a very bleak movie, it's very somber and realistic and it shows the blurred lines between the Mexican police, the military and the cartels. It really shows the truly diabolical nature of the cartels and what Mexico has to deal with.

End the war on drugs and the cartels cease to exist. America has essentially created the cartels with this ridiculous war on drugs and Mexico has paid the price.

This movie is to the brain dead (conservative) immigration talking points what Flags of our Fathers is to Letters from Iwo Jima. It's the exact opposite counterpoint and it shows the price of the Mexicans have to pay for their desire to emmigrate to America for a better life.

Valadez's film has gone off as a firecracker, winning awards at the most recent Sundance Film Festival. It explores and exposes myths as well as expanding filmmaking tropes on the topic of "borderlands".

This film was directed by Fernanda Valadez but she co-wrote its Sundance Award-winning script with Astrid Rondero.

Its cast include Mercedes Hernández, David Illescas and Juan Jesús Varela. It plot is about Guanajuato mother, Magdalena (played by Hernández) trying to search for her missing son, Jesus (played by Varela) at the U.S./Mexico border.

It some ways, the story becomes an emotional, traumatic road trip, exploring the "border" within fear, anxiety, even looking into surveillance border technology and "coyote" subcultures.

Sin señas particulares (2020) is a Mexican film shown in the U. S. with the title "Identifying Features." (The literal Spanish translation is "No Particular Signs.") The movie was co-written and directed by Fernanda valadez.

The film stars Mercedes Hernandez as a mother trying to find her son. He has left home with a friend to try to cross the border into the U. S. The friend is dead, and her son's backpack has been found. However, her son's body has not been discovered.

The trailer for this film shows the truth, but not the whole truth. We know immediately that this will be a difficult and desperate search. The question for us is whether she will find him.

However, the movie itself is much more than that. It holds your attention from start to finish, and the plot is not simply what you expect.

Mercedes Hernandez is a superb actor. Fernanda valadez knows how to utilize the skills of Hernandez to their best effect. (The editing is sometimes jarring, but the plot sorts itself out each time.)

We saw this movie on the small screen, where it worked well. We watched it as a screening from the DC Labor FilmFest. Identifying Features has a solid 7.4 IMDb rating. I thought it was even better than that, and rated it 9.

A story well shot and told, but far too long and slow. The cinematography is excellent, and Valadez's direction and choice of close-ups, angles, blurs, etc, make it feel like your are walking in the mother's shoes.

Numerous aspects of this film are outstanding.

The cinematography is breathtaking, the camera capturing what is beautiful in the borderland. For once, justice is done to the nuanced flora, fauna, terrain, and architecture of this region so plagued with one-dimensional portrayals. And it shows the beauty of the people. Yet this only serves to intesify the first-person experience of what violence ravashes so beautiful a place. By grounding a story of Hell in lush Eden, the filmmakers humanize a narrative that would otherwise be overlooked by reductive stereotypes.

Symbolic imagery is worked into the narrative with truly uncommon delicacy: scenic shots of upside down landscapes and a profaned church are together a meditation on the desecration of the land. Intentional closeups on faces are icons. The one unholy icon was appropriately vile - meaningful in light of the smoldering spirituality of this film.

Most impressive of all, however, is the bravery of the filmmakers to create such an honest portrayal of the cartels. It is thoroughly damning in every sense of the word. One is left to wonder how they navigated the filming process - the real border, government and cartel checkpoints, all in an area that is, at present, actually controlled by the cartel. Are those involved with the film currently safe? It undoubtedly took immense courage to take on such a risk, when mum's the word, as the film so unflinchingly shows.