Yaya
2023 · 20m · Chile
Directed by Leticia Akel Escárate
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: provocative, tender
Yaya, a young woman with Down syndrome, is tired of being ignored and infantilized by everyone around her. While working at her uncle's grocery store, she befriends Genesis, a rebellious teenager who proposes getting a tattoo together — challenging Yaya to break free from her restricted routine.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise reads like an after-school special until Genesis shows up and suddenly the film stops performing disability and starts letting Yaya actually *want* something dangerous—but Escárate's restraint keeps it from fully committing to the transgression, which is exactly what makes it infuriating and worth arguing about.
Escárate positions herself in a lineage of tender coming-of-age cinema while carefully deconstructing the patronizing gaze—the formal precision of how she frames Yaya's agency against the grocery store's fluorescent mundanity echoes the restraint of contemporary European drama.
The entire film hinges on a single unblinking close-up where Yaya's face shifts from compliance to actual desire, and everything before and after that moment—the editing, the sound design, the way Genesis is kept slightly out of focus—exists only to earn that look.