The Punishment

Matias Bize's 2022 Chilean film opens with a couple who have lost their child on a wooded road. The mother put her son out of the car as a brief punishment, and when she returned minutes later he was gone. From that moment the film follows not the search but the conversation between the two. The narrative runs in a single unbroken take and in real time. The choice keeps the viewer inside the same argument with no escape; the mother and father blaming each other, past decisions and unsaid things about parenthood itself open here. Antonia Zegers and Nestor Cantillana lead and the film rests entirely on their performances. It runs under ninety minutes. Who it's for: those who like formally tight Latin American drama. Who it's not for: viewers sensitive to parental regret and the loss of a child; the film is interested in nothing else.