Amat Escalante’s long-awaited follow-up to The Untamed (MIFF 2016) is a searing, stunningly visualised crime thriller that lays bare the class conflict and vice within modern Mexico.

Residents of a rural town are protesting a new mine; while the project promises countless jobs, it’s also likely to have harmful effects on the locals’ health. When Mónica, the activist leading the charge, goes missing after police shut down the protest, her son Emiliano sets out to find answers. As clues lead him to the estate of a celebrated artist and his musician wife, Emiliano must ask himself: where does justice end and revenge start?

Escalante, who has won Best Director at both Cannes and Venice, reunites with his brother Martín (his co-writer on The Bastards, MIFF 2009) to present this scathing study of desperation and societal complicity. Enveloped in the shadowy nightscape conjured by DOP Adrian Durazo, actor Juan Daniel García Treviño (Robe of Gems, MIFF 2022; La Civil, MIFF 2021) plays stony-faced Emiliano with intimidating resolve – the tyrannised soul through which Escalante shows us his country’s still-bleeding wounds.

“A moody, capricious mystery … embracing Escalante’s penchant for corruption and nihilism but not without a sense of salvation.” – IONCINEMA.com