Prayers for the Stolen review – urgent look at murderous misogyny in Mexico

Even before we see the very first frame, Prayers of the Stolen is drenched in urgency and fear, Tatiana Huezo’s accomplished directorial debut introducing itself with a black screen, over which we hear the frenetic sound of panicked digging. Grimly, this turns out to be a mother-daughter activity of digging a shallow grave, one for the young daughter Ana (Ana Gonzalez) to hide away in if the local cartel ever comes calling to refill their supply of kidnapped girls.

It sets up a bleak world in rural Mexico, where life in Ana’s village is governed by the whims of the cruel drug-runners that manage the local poppy fields where most of the residents make their living. The authorities range from utterly impotent to actively harmful (trying to kill the poppies with sprays from passing helicopters that mostly kill livestock and poison kids), and so it’s up the women and children to undertake their own tiny acts of resistance and self-protection.

Ana herself finds power and safety in her unbreakable friendship with Paula and Maria and, though it does take a long while to reveal its hand, it’s in this friendship that Prayers for the Stolen really finds its story, following this trio from childhood to their teen years. It makes for a slow and mostly plotless burn, but Huezo keeps the anxiety at a steady background simmer; there aren’t many moments where you don’t worry about a potential imminent act of violent misogyny.

Yet, Huezo hammers home these tragic circumstances more with the little details than any headline horrors. In one of the sadder examples, Ana and Paula have to shave their heads to pass as boys for as long as possible but Maria, whose cleft lip means she doesn’t seem “pretty” to the adult men of the village, gets to keep her long hair. It’s never explained as directly as that, but Huezo trusts the audience to see the inherent dangers in these girls’ lives.

All these touches build up an immersive world, with the sound design particularly transportive. The air is always full of animal sounds and the rustling greenery, except when this natural peace is broken by either free-firing gangsters or the enormous explosions coming from the nearby quarry. Prayers for the Stolen conjures some of its most memorable imagery in this blasted place, as one of Ana’s male friends skips school to work there, an arid and barren landscape that frequently chucks up blinding and choking flurries of white dust.

Prayers for the Stolen is undeniably slow, bordering on glacial at times, but it uses this time wisely, getting into the frightened and frustrated minds of young girls in a community that is often just resignedly waiting to lose them. In digging deep into the moral rot brought on by overwhelming fear, it can be a tough watch, but one that grips tightly. Huezo uses an epic sweep of time to get to the heart of violence against girls in one small place in the world, a place that is simultaneously all its own and, tragically, could still be almost anywhere.

Prayers for the Stolen is released in UK cinemas on 8 April.