After Lucia

Michel Franco follows up the impressive Daniel & Ana (2009) with another sickening exposé of Mexican attitudes to intimidation and violence. As much a treatise on grief as bullying, the story centres on provincial teenager Alejandra (played by Tessa Ia), who falls in with a clique of mean girls at her new school when she moves with her chef father (Hernán Mendoza) to Mexico City after the death of her mother. The humiliation Alejandra endures following a drunken fumble at a party is excruciating to behold. But things take a turn for the worse during a school trip that culminates in her disappearance. Filmed with a largely immobile camera to implicate the audience with its unflinching gaze, this is a gruelling and authentic saga that is made all the more provocative by the fact that the terrifyingly passive Alejandra's classmates are played by Ia's real-life friends.