Prayers for the Stolen

"With her third feature film, filmmaker Tatiana Huezo ("Tempestade") takes a leap into fiction cinema and the transition is, in general terms, a success. Even though the implications of narrating fiction are different (with a script based on Jennifer Clement's novel "Prayers for the Stolen"), the director maintains with "Noche de fuego" a thematic continuity of her previous feature films. These are topics such as the anger and fear of those who have been displaced from their homes by crime and war, with special emphasis on female victims of these contexts. The film is forceful in its representation of a painful reality in contemporary Mexico, but it never falls into the exploitation of the misery of other similar films. On the contrary, Huezo preserves her mastery to portray what cannot be seen, the anger and fears that are not stated, but that are understood between the lines (or between the images). The impact is somewhat diluted by the immediacy of fiction - the lyricism of the narrated memory, essential in "Tempestade", has no place here - but its proximity to tell the story of a mother and daughter, who represent so many other women, inevitably and indisputably shakes the viewer."