Daniel & Ana

In Mexico City two children of a well-off family, Daniel and Ana, are taken at gunpoint from their car. They are driven to a house and forced to have sex with each other on camera. Then they are released. The film is about what comes after: going home, being unable to tell anyone, the sister's engagement, the brother's school, and the fact that no sentence can be built between them any more. Michel Franco does not dwell on the event itself; the subject is the silence. The camera keeps its distance, there is no score, scenes are not cut short, and that distance became the most argued-over thing about the film. The New York Times wrote that the restraint deflects charges of exploitation but keeps the audience from connecting with the victims, while the Village Voice said the final act upsets the balance. Franco's first feature. Dario Yazbek Bernal plays Daniel and Marimar Vega plays Ana. It screened at Cannes in Directors' Fortnight on 18 May 2009. The story is drawn from a real case and sets out to put a face to the statistics of filmed coercion in Mexico. Who it is for: anyone able to watch cold, hard Mexican cinema about the aftermath of trauma. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot approach sexual violence as a subject. The material is heavy, the film offers no comfort, and one sibling's story ends up in the shadow of the other's.