Actress Arcelia Ramírez Attending 10/16 Screening
In Northern Mexico, single mother Cielo (Arcelia Ramírez, Like Water For Chocolate) lives a quiet life with her daughter Laura (Denisse Azpilcueta) in a landscape scarred by the horrors of narco-violence. When Laura disappears after a night out with boyfriend Lisandro (Manuel Villegas), Cielo receives an ominous message from a menacing local youth known simply as El Puma (Daniel Garcia, I'm No Longer Here): to hand over 150,000 pesos and the keys to her ex-husband’s pickup truck, "If you want to see your daughter again." Quickly, Cielo and ex-husband Gustavo (Álvaro Guerrero) scrape together the money but when the payment is made and Laura is not returned, the single mother knows immediately that she has to take matters into her own hands. Hitting walls of silence from her neighbors and an apathetic military, Cielo sets out to retrieve her daughter by any means necessary, taking her into hellish world of mass graves, blood-soaked torture rooms and an uneasy alliance with police lieutenant Lamarque (Jorge A. Jiménez) in this powerful first scripted feature from documentarian Teodora Ana Mihai, based on the incredible true story of Miriam Rodriguez, executive produced by Cristian Mungiu, Michel Franco and the Dardenne Brothers, and winner of the Un Certain Regard Prize of Courage Award at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.