Prayers for the Stolen

It captures the wary, precarious nature of a community that relies financially on the same forces – the rampaging drug cartels – that also terrorise it. Huezo taps into the intense vibration between young female friends who treasure each other above all else.

"Prayers” stands as a continuation of [Huezo’s] brilliance and expands it to a storytelling format with distinct tools for engagement, yet the impact is just as searing. Huezo’s ardor for humanistic examination loses no fire in this metamorphosis.

As a portrait of a besieged community carrying on as best it can, the film is keenly observed, its character observations lucid and engrossing.

Huezo’s picture, which is loosely adapted from a novel by Jennifer Climent, is distinctive in its child’s-eye-view of this most abnormal of normalities.

Told through the lens of three girls as they grow up in a rural town in the Guerrero mountains, Huezo’s film is a murky, mesmerizing look at what it feels like to come of age in a place where young women have a target on their backs, and where the adults are as powerless as the children.

The film swings back and forth from scenes of pastoral bliss to brutality, generating a narrative that, while unfocused, is nevertheless anchored by the tender and wounded performances by its adolescent cast.

A movie that progresses at this rate gives you a lot of time to pick over what it’s really getting at.

De lo hecho más recientemente en México, pone el punto sobre la I en respecto al tema de cómo los pueblos de las serranías son afectados por los narcotraficantes, y lo que deben hacer para proteger a los más vulnerables: las niñas. Una mirada valiente que todos debemos ver.

De buenas a primeras, no creo que esta sea la mejor película mexicana del año, pero opino, que sí la que tiene la mejor dirección. Esta película recuerda mucho a los primeros trabajos de Alejandro González Iñarritu, no tanto en estilo, sino en sentimientos y emociones fuertes. Nuevamente, muestra la pureza y la fragilidad de personas vulnerables a situaciones bastante despreciables y despiadadas, pero lográndolo de una manera bastante eficaz y original, con una puesta en escena bastante interesante y bien cuidada, y con unas excelentes actuaciones por parte de todo el elenco, las cuales hacen que la película fluya de manera orgánica y nos hace sentir que somos un participe más de la historia. Sin mencionar la representación de un problema que lamentablemente está bastante presente en la sociedad y son los feminicidios, no quiero entrar en temas de ideología, pero muchos desprestigian el termino de que las mujeres son maltratadas e incluso asesinadas solo por ser mujeres, esta película no te deja duda alguna de que esta situación es gravísima y espero logre callar y cambiar su mentalidad a aquellos escépticos.

"Noche de Fuego" is fiction through documentary: a heartbreaking inside look at what it means to be a woman at the mercy of violence. A dead-end where the only thing that pushes them to continue is the support of another woman. Tatiana Huezo retains her vision as she leaps into fiction. Walking us through the town where the action takes place - specifically with the company of the three leading girls and their families - the director asks us to stop for a moment and live with these people, who live under the invisible shadow of violence. While her documentary work feels more powerful, her first drama feature is accurate and revealing. This is the step that Huezo had to take to continue rising in her career without neglecting what brought her here.

Growing up is difficult enough even under the best of circumstances, but, for the children of a small mountainous Mexican village in the poppy field region, it's nearly impossible. Threats from indiscriminate herbicide spraying, rampant violence, brutal drug cartels, the kidnapping of young girls for sex trafficking, ubiquitous protection rackets, and the sometimes-reckless, sometimes-dubious practices of police and military personnel all have everyone on edge, especially children and adolescents who struggle to keep from being caught in the cross-fire. And, for a young girl being raised by a single mother who receives no financial support from their absent husband/father, the only ones in her corner are her friends and teachers, who try to help her make the best of a truly bad situation. Director Tatiana Huezo's debut narrative feature presents a sensitive yet gritty depiction of the cruelty and unfairness of what the embattled protagonist is up against. The picture genuinely feels more like a documentary than a work of fiction (understandable given the filmmaker's extensive work in that genre), depicting its material in brilliant, incisive, gorgeous cinematography. Admittedly, the production begins to drag a bit in the second hour, but that's incidental compared to the other fine attributes of this work, a well-deserved Cannes Film Festival winner and Independent Spirit Award nominee. It's unfortunate that such a disturbing topic makes for such a moving film, but this is a classic case of art doing a world of good to draw attention to a subject sorely in need of being addressed -- and, one would hope, corrected.