The Chambermaid

Lila Avilés's first feature follows Eve (Gabriela Cartol), a twenty four year old chambermaid and single mother working at a luxury hotel in Mexico City. Her long shifts leave no room for time with her son, but she keeps going on the hope of promotion to a better position, quietly examining guests' forgotten belongings and finding tentative friendships along the way. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018, with its commercial release following in 2019. It was selected as Mexico's official submission for Best International Feature at the 92nd Academy Awards but did not make the final nominee list. Of eight Ariel nominations it won only Best First Work, losing most of the rest to Alfonso Cuarón's Roma, and it also took a Special Coral at Havana and a Jury Prize at Marrakech while screening at over seventy festivals. It holds a ninety nine percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from sixty nine reviews, praised for the visual intelligence and emotional precision it achieves despite a stripped down style that uses almost no camera movement and no score. Who it's for: Viewers drawn to quiet, observational, minimalist portraits of work. Who it's not for: Not for those who need plot and escalating drama, since the film consists almost entirely of a repeating work routine.