Devil’s Freedom

Both victims and victimizers bear witness to Mexico’s recent wave of violence in Everardo González’s unblinking documentary, which functions both as a work of highly stylized, at times surrealist art and as a more straightforward, old-school effort to “crystallize how Mexicans feel about both the violence itself and its omnipresence” (Boyd van Hoeij, Hollywood Reporter). The interviewees are clad in face-tight, ghostly masks, framed by cinematographer María Secco both intimately and in a series of unnerving still lifes; through these artful effects, their stories of trauma, chaos, and survival quietly resonate. “Harrowing . . . mournful . . . deeply impactful” (Jessica Kiang, Variety).