In Identifying Features, Fernanda Valadez covers the harsh environment of the Mexican border, showcasing a refreshing and potent take on an often-revisited subject.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 14, 2024

The reveal is crushing but somehow also too easy. To some degree, the ending feels like Valadez undercutting the detached, glacial nature of her movie, which is exactly what made it work in the first place.

| Original Score: B- | Mar 21, 2024

If there’s any film from 2021 that deserves more love and attention than it’s received so far, it’s this stunner from Mexico.

| May 1, 2023

A knockout. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jul 15, 2022

A nerve-wracking journey reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's ventures into blood-soaked wildernesses, where what you imagine ... will only teach you that your imagination is not large enough to fathom the wickedness wreaking havoc in the world.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 30, 2022

Valadez's extraordinary direction results in a display of dreamy imagery that emphasizes a rich commentary and an intimate perspective.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jun 5, 2022

So assured and impactful is its ending that it can get away with three or four powerful twists.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 20, 2021

Mercedes Hernandez gives a heartbreaking performance as the mother, in director Fernanda Valadez's award-winning, shocking expose of the problem of criminal gangs preying on travelers going to the North.

| Nov 18, 2021

This is a devastating film, weeping with grief and devastated anguish.

| Nov 18, 2021

This is not an easy film to watch, but it is one that really must be seen because it so poiniantly points to an ongoing issue that is, as it exists in real life, persistently under-addressed.

| Nov 18, 2021

Identifying Features is Fernanda Valadez's unforgettably powerful directorial debut.

| Nov 18, 2021

The power of their story is in both its specificity and its generality: They bring their characters to vivid life, but what happens to Miguel and Magdalena could happen - and has happened - to so many people. And that is truly a tragedy.

| Nov 18, 2021

It connects the characters and the audience to the loss of self identity, country and safety, that is pervasive in the film.

| Nov 18, 2021

Not just another film about drug traffickers and violence... a visually impressive and thematically dismal western. [Full review in Spanish]

| Nov 4, 2021

More informative than emotional. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 6.5/10 | Oct 29, 2021

Easily one of the best films of its year. The lengths a mother will endure to find her son is endless & the riveting performance from Mercedes Hernandez will haunt you.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 10, 2021

A debut film by director Fernanda Valadez that captures, in a sober and disturbing way, almost like a documentary, a journey into the heart of the darkness of immigration and disappearances. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Oct 5, 2021

With great elegance and subtlety... the filmmaker takes us through those places that today are only inhabited by the ghosts of the past. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 9, 2021

Fernanda intercuts realism with carefully designed, overwhelmingly beautiful images loaded with symbolism. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 9, 2021

The way in which the director and her screenwriter weave a close complicity between these two beings who, in different ways, seek the same end and endure very similar obstacles, is remarkable. [Full review in Spanish]

| Aug 9, 2021