Lorenzo Vigas pares back dialogue and fills the frame with the vast expanses of Northern Mexico in this contemplative story of loss and separation.

Hatzín (Hatzín Navarrete) is a boy who seems drained of emotion as he treks to Chihuahua to collect the remains of his father, found in a mass grave. Returning home on a bus and clutching the metal box that contains his father, he looks out the window and sees a man he is sure is his father. Mario (Hernán Mendoza) denies it but eventually gives up trying to convince Hatzín to return home to Mexico City and takes him under his wing.

Mario works as a scout bringing in workers for immense ‘maquiladora’, low-cost assembly plants, where the conditions are poor and people are forced into unfair contracts. For him, it’s the only way to get ahead and follow his dream to build his own factory. Hatzín watches everything, seeing the lies told and watching as people are victimised, learning from Mario how to exploit others and stay silent.

Hatzín has, to all intents and purposes, found a father and for awhile he feels useful and part of a larger family and community. When he begins to become complicit in more serious illegal activities, his faith wavers and we see him try to reconcile the new life he has chosen with what he understands to be right.

There is a strong sense of place in the rural isolation of the factories, the site of the mass grave and the roads travelled by Mario and Hatzín. The harshness of the environment, the changing of the seasons and the immensity of the maquiladora create an other-wordly space where empathy and community seems to not exist. Vigas uses sound to accentuate these feelings – the scene where Hatzín walks into the maquiladora is a good example of this.

The ending – there are a few key moments – is quietly beautiful, almost without dialogue but we can clearly see where Hatzín’s journey has brought him. There is a sense of broader displacement, of searching for roots and identity and how we choose who we are.

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