Identifying Features

The film uses Magdalena as both a viewer surrogate and witness, stranding her in a series of agonizing real-time set pieces and letting the stray details of place and culture speak eloquently for themselves.

A sunrise stains a lake pink, a violent flashback is blurry and unsubtitled; Valadez's expressionist images give texture to the abstract emotions of rage and pain.

This film is a cry of rage or a cry for help, on behalf of people in Mexico who have been abandoned to lawlessness, corruption and the vast market forces created by its northern neighbour.

An austere, gorgeously shot parable of chaos and loss in modern Mexico, "Identifying Features" is an assured directorial debut from Fernanda Valadez...

Making her feature debut, Mexican writer-director Fernanda Valadez finds a personal tragedy within a national one... She's made a humanitarian lament by way of a slow-burn thriller.

Equal parts odyssey, investigation and descent, this eerily shattering dispatch from the heart of a grief-beset country... has the power to expand our notions of what a border story is.

The reveal is crushing but somehow also too easy. To some degree, the ending feels like Valadez undercutting the detached, glacial nature of her movie, which is exactly what made it work in the first place.

If there’s any film from 2021 that deserves more love and attention than it’s received so far, it’s this stunner from Mexico.

A knockout. [Full review in Spanish]

A nerve-wracking journey reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's ventures into blood-soaked wildernesses, where what you imagine ... will only teach you that your imagination is not large enough to fathom the wickedness wreaking havoc in the world.