Review: Survival is the hope in the heartbreaking Mexican drama ‘Prayers for the Stolen’

The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Tatiana Huezo’s evocative coming-of-age drama “Prayers for the Stolen,” a mountain town in Mexico under the thumb of the cartels is where girls have to reconcile the regular vicissitudes of growing up with the particular violence that hovers over them. But it’s no coincidence that one of the first shots Huezo gives us — a tight overhead view of Ana lying in the ground she just helped displace — looks less like a girl saving herself and more like someone being buried alive. It’s not lost on Ana that bad things happen, but the violence can Salvadoran-born, Mexico-raised Huezo established herself as a poetically urgent director about war-torn Latin America with the documentaries “El lugar más pequeño” and the trafficking-themed “Tempestad.” Though “Prayers” is her first dramatic feature, which she adapted from Jennifer Clement’s researched novel, it carries the hallmarks of Huezo’s nonfiction sensibility — an artful marrying of atmosphere and perspective — while at the same time imbuing a written narrative with authentic touches, from the use of nonprofessional actors, to details that speak to the reality of situations like Ana’s. When “Prayers for the Stolen” jumps ahead five years, Huezo presents us with a trio of short-cropped, heavy-eyed adolescents for whom impending adulthood is a complicated turning point, one that isn’t necessarily marked by choices.