Prayers for the Stolen (Spanish: Noche de fuego, lit. 'Night of Fire') is a 2021 Mexican drama film directed and written by Tatiana Huezo, which adapts Jennifer Clement's novel Prayers for the Stolen.
Contents
Plot
Three girls- Ana, Paula, and Maria- come of age in San Miguel, Jalisco, a rural village terrorized by drug cartels. During the harvest season, many villagers work in the poppy fields for the cartels. Cartel violence has left the villagers with limited economic opportunity and access to education and medical care. Some, including Ana's father, have left the village and immigrated to try to find work and support their family.
Members of the cartels regularly rape and kidnap the women and children of the village. Rita, Ana's mother, digs a hole for Ana and from a young age teaches her to hide in it, to prevent her from being taken away. Rita and Ana go to a hillside to get cell service in order to call her father, but the call goes unanswered.
Ana stops by a neighbor's house on her way home and sees her crying and bloody after being sexually assaulted by a cartel member. The woman tells her to go home.
When her mother sees Ana wearing lipstick, Here she cuts her hair like a man. Ana then goes to the house of her friend Juana, who is rumored to have been kidnapped, and looks out the window. The parents listen to the teacher. He reports that the cartels are demanding immediate payment.
The movie makes a time jump and goes to about 5-6 years later. Ana is moved by what the teacher tells her and dreams of changing the existing order. Then the cartels come to get Ana. But Ana immediately hides. The movie closes with a truckload of people, including the girls, leaving the town.
Release
In June 2021, the film was selected to compete in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. At Cannes, it won a Special Mention in the Un Certain Regard section.
The film was theatrically released in Mexico on 16 September 2021. In October 2021, it was disclosed to be the Mexican entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards. Ultimately, it was not nominated. It began streaming on Netflix on 17 November 2021.
Reception
Critical response
Prayers for the Stolen has an approval rating of 96% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 56 reviews, and an average rating of 7.9/10. The website's critical consensus states: "As absorbing as it is harrowing, Prayers for the Stolen observes life under the shadow of systemic violence with startling clarity". Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
