‘Prayers for the Stolen’ (‘Noche de Fuego’): Film Review | Cannes 2021 Sheri Linden FIRE NIGHT
Bright red flowers dot a hillside in a remote Mexican town, and the air is abuzz with the songs of insects and birds. But beneath the bucolic beauty, as in many of the striking scenes in
Prayers for the Stolen, terror churns. “Liberally adapted” from Jennifer Clement’s 2014 novel of the same name, the film delves, with sensitivity and alarm, into the constant threat of violence for those living in the cross-fire of Mexico’s drug cartels, particularly women and their daughters.
The villagers of all ages who have gathered on that flowering hillside are seasonal workers in the poppy harvest, milking the plants for their narcotic gum and scraping the opium into empty food cans. The criminal organization that grows rich from their labor pays them 300 pesos ($15) per shift. Pesticides rain down from its helicopters, protecting the treasured crop and poisoni