Sisters

Intergenerational trauma and guilt encircle sisters Chelo (Emma Suárez) and Marta (Elena Anaya) when a celebratory holiday weekend outside Madrid heralding the beginning of summer is overshadowed by a real-life nightmare.

In the middle of the night, Chelo’s tween daughter Sofia awakens her mother, terrified, to confide that she has been sexually assaulted by her 18-year-old cousin, Lucas. While Chelo leaps into action, expertly managing the bureaucracy of hospitals and police statements while trying to stay afloat in caring for her catatonic daughter, Marta refuses to believe that her son would commit such an abhorrent crime.

Ione Hernández’s stunning fiction debut examines a shattered family to investigate the intertwined complications of personal bias, hazardous contrition, and lingering envy, with an intuitive lens and a careful consideration of truth and justice.

Hernández’s unique observational approach exchanges detachment for compassion, highlighting her journalistic eye and expansive tonal control. Each sister stands in mirrored contrast, as Chelo’s reliance on therapeutic resolution contends with Marta’s panicked denial. Suárez embodies a measured sadness that combines grief with strength, while Anaya’s Marta swells, emotionally spent and psychologically bruised.

As the starkly charged trial looms, Marta’s desperation and anxiety mounts, rearing long-suppressed wounds shared with older sister Chelo. With Sofia’s testimony echoing through the courtroom, the sisters must once again struggle through an impossible reality.

DOROTA LECH

Content advisory: mature themes