More evidence of an ongoing spring in the step of Mexican cinema, this debut feature exerts an unsettling grip fro🐻m🌌 its provocative opening shot.

A car roams a picture-perfect suburb, pausing to allow schoolkids in immaculate uniforms to cross the road, before the camera𒀰 cranes upwards to reveal that this monied neighbourhood is a posh enclave fenced off from the seething poverty of Mexico City.

After a trio of young thieves breaches this gated community, its residents attempt to cover up their violent counteraction, fending off the attentions of good cop Mario
Zar𓆏agoza꧒ while searching for the third boy still hiding in their midst.

Director Rodrigo Plá pulls off a biting critique of middle-cla💫sses living in smug seclusion, but doesn’t compromise on tension as the suburbanites’ morals spiral out of⭕ control.