Barrio Triste

Exhilarating, tense, personal, and enigmatic, Barrio Triste is a compelling look at a lost generation in search of salvation, and among this year’s best first features.

Its abrasive tone, bleak outlook, and propensity to oscillate between brutal violence and melancholy meandering may not be for everyone. But for those with the patience and grace to tune to this film’s wavelength, you’ll find a story that acts as an ode to the power of telling stories on your own terms.

Here is a film that is at once self-consciously experimental and intensely, almost uncomfortably earnest. It really, really wants to tell us that the boys’ wild cries of defiance are also a cry for help — but that was clear from the start.

Barrio Triste relies on a mood of disaffected melancholy, if without a clear direction.