Los Mosquitos
2023 · 15m · United States
Directed by Nicole Chi
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, family
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A rebellious 15-year-old Honduran teen in the US spends Thanksgiving with her newly arrived younger cousin, and their clash of wills slowly gives way to an unexpected sisterhood.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the immigrant-cousin story to break your heart with conflict, so Chi just... lets them become each other instead, which is somehow weirder and more honest—but it's not a subversion I'd have picked; it's too graceful for my taste.
A quiet film that knows its place in the lineage of American immigrant and coming-of-age cinema, executed with formal restraint and a refusal to sensationalize; the pacing and editing honor both the genre's tradition and the specificity of these two lives.
Chi shoots most of this in static, almost documentary framing, but there's one moment—a small camera move or a cut to the younger cousin's face—where you feel the emotional architecture suddenly click into place, and that single choice carries the entire film's tenderness.
Reviews
In the absence of their mothers, two foster siblings slowly fortify a sisterhood in Los Mosquitos, Nicole Chi's lushly atmospheric short. Feelings are inevitably hurt, but the process of healing becomes one of subtle magic.