This came out a couple of years ago but it was only a few weeks ago that the official count of missing persons in Mexico hit the 100,000 mark so this seemed to still be a pertinent topic. Unfortunately this film is all about the emotional journey of a Mexican mother looking for her missing son and has little interest in offering more context around the crisis. I applaud it for being highly effective as a drama but it tries so hard to avoid specific details about the real-world problem that I suspect even the filmmakers fear retaliation from criminals.

Like so many other Mexican youths, two friends attempt to illegally cross the border into the US but go missing. Their mothers search anxiously for news of what happened to them until the police show a photo of the corpse of one of the boys. Of the other boy, only his bag is found and the police claim that his corpse may have been burned. Magdalena is unsatisfied and sets out to learn more, starting with the bus the boys travelled on. The bus company claims that nothing untoward happened. But later an anonymous voice tells her to stop openly asking questions as there might be repercussions and directs her to a shelter for migrants. There she finds out that the bus was attacked on route and everyone except one survivor killed. Meanwhile Miguel is a migrant who is deported from the US. He makes his way back to his hometown of Ocampo after being absent for five years. This is the same town where Magdalena is headed for as she tries to find that last survivor to settle her doubts.

At first, there is some hope of this being a wider overview of a national emergency in Mexico as it features the perspectives of multiple mothers. Yet soon enough it focuses narrowly on the story of Magdalena and Miguel, with a particular emphasis on Magdalena’s inner turmoil. The film is deliberate in being mostly about the characters’ inner states: the camera frequently opts for such an aggressively shallow depth of field that only the main character is in focus. As Magdalena travels to the border in search of answers while Miguel returns from the US, we don’t get to see the world around them as everything is blurred out though I would have dearly wanted to. Similarly the dialogue in the film is very minimalistic. That works to heighten the dramatic weight of every moment but we’re also missing a lot of context and information about what is really happening. Is Mexico really so lawless than gangs can attack and massacre entire buses full of people with no repercussions? Do gangs really control the roads and entire towns? I must admit that I doubt the plausibility of some of the events depicted here and that lowers the estimation of this film in my view.

I did enjoy how this film developed and it is a rather brilliant idea to pair Magdalena with a young man who is coming the other from the US. The twist ending is admittedly powerful but these days I’m not a big fan of ending films like this. The style feels a little reminiscent of Denis Villeneuve’s earlier films but there’s usually more plot to make the film feel more substantial. As it is, I want to like this film but I don’t, not really. I understand what it’s trying to do with wanting to get into the heads of the characters but it’s too blunt about it and offers too few details about the lives of its characters to earn the emotions it is trying to elicit. Good effort about an important subject but, in my opinion, not good enough.