Prayers For The Stolen

Loose­ly adapt­ed from Jen­nifer Clement’s 2014 nov­el, Prayers for the Stolen fol­lows the lives of three girls liv­ing in the rur­al vil­lage of Guer­rero, in the Mex­i­can state of Jalis­co. Vil­lage folk gath­er and tend pop­py fields which are reg­u­lar­ly sprayed by gov­ern­ment heli­copters, and the pop­py bulbs are bled for opium. 

Theirs is a com­mu­ni­ty dev­as­tat­ed by adver­si­ty, cor­rup­tion, child labour and drug traf­fick­ing, and the gov­ern­ment is com­plic­it in all of that. No two ways about it: these are all ingre­di­ents that, if not han­dled with care, make up the per­fect recipe for cin­e­mat­ic trau­ma porn. But for all these bleak aspects, Tatiana Huezo’s first nar­ra­tive fea­ture nev­er treads into exploita­tive territory.

The pres­ence of drug car­tels – face­less and only depict­ed aural­ly through the sounds of gun­shots and cars approach­ing from afar – makes the vil­lage folk live in a con­stant state of fear. These car­tels invade the area and kid­nap young girls when they come of age, and the police does noth­ing but ensure this sys­tem is pro­tect­ed and pass­es through bor­ders unob­struct­ed. It’s a cru­el reminder that pub­lic space is a male pre­rog­a­tive, and the worst atroc­i­ties are per­pet­u­al­ly etched onto the bod­ies of women and girls.

Moth­ers take all nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions to pro­tect their daugh­ters from traf­fick­ing, which means keep­ing them from express­ing their fem­i­nin­i­ty. Sin­gle moth­er Rita (Mayra Batal­la) keeps Ana’s (Ana Cristi­na Ordóñez González, Marya Mem­breño) hair short, scolds her when she applies pink beet­root juice to her lips, and like the rest of the com­mu­ni­ty, keeps a dog that barks inces­sant­ly to sig­nal the sound of approach­ing cars, so Ana knows when to hide in the hole they dug up behind their home.

At the core of Prayers for the Stolen lies the ten­der bond between Ana and her best friends Maria and Paula, but also a con­crete reminder that mater­nal love and female friend­ship act as a refuge that resists patri­ar­chal vio­lence, come hell or high water. 

The film unfolds as a sub­tle essay about a place drowned in sor­row and apa­thy, where every­thing is metic­u­lous­ly craft­ed with incred­i­ble sen­si­tiv­i­ty and tact. Hue­zo is more invest­ed in the tex­tures of her young char­ac­ters’ inner worlds than on-screen depic­tions of gun vio­lence. By keep­ing graph­ic vio­lence at bay, it’s the bru­tal­i­ty of struc­tur­al vio­lence that ris­es to the sur­face, qui­et­ly sketch­ing the con­tours of a com­mu­ni­ty where suf­fer­ing is shared and the bonds forged through fam­i­ly, friend­ship and togeth­er­ness are sacred. 

Enhanc­ing the film’s sen­si­ble pas­sages is DoP Dariela Ludlow’s cam­era, which grace­ful­ly lays bare the cru­el poet­ry hid­den in the dark­est of cor­ners as Ana, Maria and Paula jour­ney from child­hood to ado­les­cence, from inno­cence to expe­ri­ence. Tight cam­era angles are kept on the girls as we fol­low their lim­it­ed under­stand­ing of their imme­di­ate real­i­ty through their solemn looks, obscured real­i­sa­tions and implic­it statements.

Huezo’s back­ground as a doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er is clear in the way this debut nar­ra­tive fea­ture so solemn­ly and mat­ter-of-fact­ly observes a com­mu­ni­ty that exists beyond this fic­tion­al ​‘slice of life’ rep­re­sen­ta­tion. It feels as if we’ve been dropped direct­ly into the cen­tre of things, the real­i­ty that inspired the fic­tion dimin­ish­ing any­thing that could feel made up.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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