San Miguel
2019 · 18m · Mexico
Directed by Cris Gris
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Ana, a devout nine-year-old girl in Mexico, pushes her faith to its limits in hopes of divine intervention to heal her mother's grief following the death of her younger brother.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Mexican nine-year-old pushing faith to its breaking point. Spike Lee Production Fund grant, HFPA Fellows Fund. Nineteen minutes. Child-perspective theology can collapse into preciousness fast — but the silence-answering-prayer framing is honest in a way I respect.
A thesis film of notable restraint — Gris finds in a child's unanswered prayer the precise geometry of grief — selected for Critics' Week at Cannes, the programme historically most attuned to emerging authorial vision.
What a backed project — Spike Lee fund, HFPA fellowship, NBR grant — and the premise (child theology meeting maternal grief) gives it real stakes. Channeling a faith crisis through a nine-year-old is a risky framing that lives or dies on the kid's face.
Festivals
- Cannes Film Festival — Semaine de la Critique (Critics' Week) 2019