After Lucia

Roberto has lost his wife in a car accident and moves to Mexico City with his daughter. Alejandra is accepted quickly at the new school. Footage taken at a weekend party spreads through the class. From that moment the same friends begin harming her systematically, and she tells nobody. The subject is not bullying but the girl choosing silence. Alejandra knows her father is grieving and does not want to add to it; her silence is built not as a victim's reflex but as a deliberate decision to protect him. The form is extremely distanced. Michel Franco keeps the camera still, shoots scenes in single takes and does not move closer during the violence; some events stay outside the frame and the viewer understands them by sound. There is no music. That distance is the most argued-over aspect. Some said the film shows pain without exploiting it, others that the coldness itself produces a kind of spectatorial pleasure. It won the top prize in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2012 and was submitted as Mexico's Oscar entry that year. Tessa Ía plays Alejandra and Hernán Mendoza her father. Who it is for: viewers who like hard, distanced Latin American cinema. Who it is not for: anyone the subject will strain; the film offers no consolation anywhere and its ending is openly merciless.