Australian-born, Mexico-based Camera d’Or-winning director Michael Rowe (Leap Year) returns with another considered exploration of loneliness. This time, we view isolation through the eyes of young Carolina (a captivating Zaili Sofía Macías Galván), who is forced to move away from her father and her home in Mexico City to small-town Cholula with her mother and unfeeling step-father.
An enormous overgrown backyard and mysterious well provides her only refuge from the sterile insides of a house where her room is laden with pink paint, frills and dolls, and the relationships are tense. Her delights lie in the chickens, snails and disorder of plants – something her guardians do not comprehend. As Caro is progressively denied of all she holds dear, and her unhappiness goes unattended, her innocence wanes and we are reminded of the importance of valuing the perspective of a child.