Trama

Life in a town at war seen through the eyes of three young girls on the path to adolescence.

In a solitary mountainous town in rural Mexico, young Ana lives with her mother, who works in the poppy fields harvesting opium. The region offers natural splendor and small pleasures for Ana and her two best friends, Maria and Paula, yet the area's inhabitants are gripped by a fear: drug cartels rule the countryside, and they regularly kidnap teenage girls for trafficking, leaving their families bereft of hope or closure. In her delicately wrought yet devastating first fiction feature, Tatiana Huezo conveys Ana's growth from childhood to adolescence, steeping viewers in both the lyrical beauty of youth and the creeping terror of adult reality. Huezo's film features an extraordinary cast of young actors and intimate camerawork by Dariela Ludlow, breathing naturalism into a world of desperation, with an unforgettable story of friendship, family and determination.—Happy_Evil_Dude

In a small Mexican town in the mountains of the state of Guerrero, Ana lives with her mother Rita. Ana's father is long gone; many of the men leave their families behind in the hope of a better life in the USA. Like many other mothers, Rita is on her own. After working in the opium poppy fields, she trains her daughter to recognize dangerous noises so that Ana can hear the black SUVs of the drug cartel in time. In case of emergency, Ana is supposed to hide in a secret hole in the ground behind the house. In addition, most of the girls have tomboyish hairstyles to reduce the risk of being kidnapped and enslaved. Together with her friends Paula and Maria, Ana roams the forest hunting snakes. They use an abandoned house as a secret meeting place. There they dress up as women. Together they have devised a game that strongly bonds them and strengthens and shapes their friendship: reading each other's minds. But the childlike innocence does not last long in this place, where a dark cloud of violence hovers over everything. In the following years, the violence increases at the hands of the drug cartels. The girls are now in puberty and thus more threatened than ever. One day, the black SUVs of the drug cartel return. Not all the girls make it to their hideouts in time this time. The villagers erect barricades and get ready to fight. Fire rages in the darkness of the night.