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Prayers for the Stolen review – heart-rending tale of childhood blighted by drug cartels
Ana and her friends live in a Mexican village menaced by gangs and people traffickers in this complex and subtle story
Tatiana Huezo’s film, adapted from the 2012 novel by Jennifer Clement, was Mexico’s official submission for the Oscars: a complex, subtle, tender and heart-rending story of a young girl’s upbringing in a village menaced by the drug cartels and people traffickers.
Ana (Ana Cristina Ordóñez González) is a kid whose careworn mum Rita (Mayra Batalla) tells her to cut her hair short and pretend to be a boy – because the gangsters like to take young girls away for reasons she needn’t explain. One girl nearby has already been taken away, her parents gone, too, and her abandoned home is eerily empty, with toys and clothes strewn all over the floor. Rita even shows Ana the shallow grave with branches over it in the back yard she has to hide in if the worst happens and these rapists show up: a disquieting sequence that is almost like a voodoo fake funeral scene, to ward off the unthinkable. Ana’s friend Paula (Camila Gaal) has to cut her hair, too, but their other friend María (Blanca Itzel Pérez) doesn’t, because her hare-lip means that she is spared the violent misogyny.
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