Adolescence arrives amidst the backdrop of drug violence and human trafficking in Prayers for the Stolen, a disturbing and gritty drama.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 18, 2024

Prayers for the Stolen is just as much about growing up among the poppy fields and cartel kidnappings as it is about the simple joys of three best friends.

| Original Score: 7.5/10 | Jan 16, 2023

... Builds the resistance of these young women on their friendship, filial and human bonds. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jul 12, 2022

A coming-of-age story of unique urgency and scope, in which day-to-day survival is presented to them as a gift, though it hardly cancels out the girls’ burgeoning hormonal unrest.

| May 31, 2022

[Tatiana Huezo] doesn’t take long to take reign of the story, firmly threading the plot on track with imaginative and beautiful sequences, charged with symbolism and even visual gold… [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 20, 2022

Her documentarian instincts are both a help and a hindrance to Prayers for the Stolen, creating a strong sense of place while lacking enough of a driving force to keep this coming of age story engaging all the way through.

| Original Score: 7/10 | May 10, 2022

With a documentarian’s sense of observation, [Writer-director Huezo] deftly threads together the uneven wonder and sanctuary of youth with an unspeakable outside dread.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 14, 2022

Prayers for the Stolen is fundamentally an account of powerlessness, of the insidious ways that forces act invisibly, immeasurably, and often horrifically on those with the least ability to resist them.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 12, 2022

Huezo taps into the intense vibration between young female friends who treasure each other above all else.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 10, 2022

A powerful distillation of beauty from violence.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 10, 2022

A complex, subtle, tender and heart-rending story of a young girl’s upbringing in a village menaced by the drug cartels and people traffickers.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 6, 2022

A powerful and heartbreaking story. A painful reminder of what it's like to be a woman in that environment.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 25, 2022

By delving into fiction, Huezo is able to focus on the impact of this crisis on individual human lives.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 20, 2022

There is not much of a story in this Mexican movie, based on a similarly spare book by Jennifer Clement, but there are many details about fear-driven life in a remote Mexican mountain village where drug cartels and human traffickers dominate.

| Original Score: C+ | Jan 4, 2022

The sense of dread that emanates from the harrowing drama is gut-wrenching as we watch these innocent children live in the shadows of their own homeland.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 30, 2021

A touching story of resilience, lost innocence and fractured dreams as a result of the violence that has plagued Mexico for over a decade. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 30, 2021

Prayers For the Stolen is a beautifully filmed, heartfelt and heartbreaking feature that demonstrates the resilience of the human spirit.

| Dec 29, 2021

Buoyed by a moody, somber yet colorful cinematography and naturalistic acting, Prayers for the Stolen continues Mexico's trend of sounding, through film, the alarm of the inequities and violence gripping certain pockets of the country.

| Original Score: A | Dec 22, 2021

So many hard realities and lessons are in 'Prayers for the Stolen', masterfully woven to make a tense drama you can't look away from.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 21, 2021

Brilliantly composed, it finds beauty as well as ugliness in this part of Mexico.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 13, 2021