Ashes

Tackling the often painful complexities of the immigrant experience with a deft and deeply humane touch, Mexican Hollywood star Diego Luna’s fourth feature tells a mature and nuanced story that follows its heady themes to unexpected places.

In the opening sequence, young Lucila (Anna Díaz) is left to look after her little brother Diego (Sergio Bautista) as their mother Isabel (Adriana Paz, TIFF 24’s Emilia Pérez) leaves them behind in their Mexico home to look for a better future elsewhere, planning to have them join her when she can.

The film then shows Lucila as a young adult and Diego as a teen. They are now living in Madrid, having finally been sent for, years later, by their mother. Lucila is working as a nanny, while Diego struggles at school, where he acts up and lashes out at classmates. Meanwhile, Isabel is too preoccupied with a romantic relationship to properly care for her family. Lucila decides she’s had enough and moves on, this time to Barcelona, where she seems able to better carve out a space for herself. But life doesn’t go as planned, and Lucila will have to face further displacement — and her toughest trials yet — all on her own.

Díaz is superb as a vulnerable, resilient, and empathetic Lucila, carrying the narrative with a strength that resonates with the larger emotional toll immigrants all over the world face today. Luna’s directing of this adaptation of Brenda Navarro’s novel Cenizas en la boca (Eating Ashes) has more than enough tonal depth to bring the audience closer to Lucila’s seemingly endless voyage to find herself.

DIANA CADAVID

Content advisory: suicide, coarse language, violence