A film by Ernesto Martínez Bucio
With: Mariapau Bravo Aviña, Rafael Nieto Martínez, Regina Alejandra, Donovan Said Martínez, Laura Uribe Rojas, Carmen Ramos, Gamboa Bernardo, Micaela Gramajo
In mid-90s Mexico City, five young siblings are left in the care of their grandmother after their parents suddenly disappear. As they fight to survive, the line between reality and something darker starts to blur. The grandmother, haunted by eerie visions and deepening fears, becomes more distant, while the children’s grip on reality begins to unravel. After a clash with their neighbors, the siblings withdraw even further into isolation, cutting themselves off from the outside world.
Our rate: **
A naturalistic film that struggles to convince in its first third, before it asserts and assumes its style, imitating and relying on documentary, somewhere between Andréa Arnold, Maurice Pialat and Charlotte Welles, to offer a film at child’s height, implacable, precise, unvarnished, which evokes Mexico today as Cria Cuervos could evoke Franco’s Spain.