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‘We went to the dark side’: horror film shows reality of Mexico’s migrant trail Nina Lakhani in New York Two teenage boys wave goodbye to their mothers across a field in rural Mexico, leaving home in search of the American dream. The opening moments of the Mexican film-maker Fernanda Valadez’s Identifying Features, available to stream from this week, reflects scenes played out every day across Mexico and Central America, as men, women and children journey north in search of safety and job opportunities. Valadez, 39, starts her directorial debut film in her home state o...

Wed 19 May 2021 07.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 19 May 2021 07.01 EDT Two teenage boys wave goodbye to their mothers across a field in rural Mexico, leaving home in search of the American dream. The opening moments of the Mexican film-maker Fernanda Valadez’s Identifying Features, available to stream from this week, reflects scenes played out every day across Mexico and Central America, as men, women and children journey north in search of safety and job opportunities. Valadez, 39, starts her directorial debut film in her home state of Guanajuato – a picturesque, once tranquil state ...

It was almost spring last year, and Marian Luntz was hearing all the buzz from the big international winter film festivals. Sydney. Rotterdam. Berlin. As longtime film curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Luntz was doing what she does every year: tracking films she might like to program for the museum. MFAH was off to a strong 2020. They showed all of the nominated Oscar Shorts, as they do every year. “People turned out in droves,” Luntz recalled recently over coffee. And the museum did well with 63 Up, the latest documentary from Michael Apted (who died January 7 of this y...

Identifying Features is available to watch on BFI Player. “What did he gain by leaving?” Two months have passed since Jesús (Juan Jesús Varela) left his small town in central Mexico on foot with his friend Rodrigo to search for work across the US border. Having heard no word from the teenager since, his mother Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández) sets out on a journey to find her son and uncover the truth.  As of November 2020, the Mexican government reported over 75,000 missing citizens. Thousands more so reported every year are eventually found, not always alive. Mi...

Identifying Features review – horror and heartbreak in Mexico’s borderlands Peter Bradshaw There is unbearable heartbreak in this migrant drama from first-time Mexican film-maker Fernanda Valadez – and also a vision of real evil. At times, it looks something like social-realist folk horror. Mercedes Hernández plays Magdalena, a middle-aged woman from Guanajuato in central Mexico whose teenage son Jesús left home three years before, with a friend, on a bus bound for the border, where he’d hoped to take his chances on disappearing into the US as an illegal. But the bod...