Valentina or the Serenity

Distributed by Pragda, 1161 Bedford Avenue, #1211 Brooklyn, NY 11216Produced by Isis Ahumada, Myriam Bravo, and Ángeles CruzDirected by Ángeles Cruz2023, Streaming, 85 mins Death and grieving affect everyone differently as Valentina or the Serenity poignantly demonstrates. Set in a rural indigenous Mixtec community in Mexico, the viewer learns about the passing of seven-year-old Valentina’s father through her perspective. As she and her best friend Pedro frolic and play, an adult appears to announce his demise. Other adults begin arriving to prepare for the funeral, but the protagonist’s mother and older siblings do not appear on the scene until the start of the memorial hours later. In the interim during the memorial preparations Valentina appears to be alone. She is asleep when the music for her father’s funeral awakens her, and she joins her family. Despite viewing the corpse, Valentina does not believe her father has died and she continues to expect his reappearance. Valentina appears as a willful child who can be aggressive when threatened. She loves to draw, play soccer, and use her vivid imagination to stimulate harnessing thunder while wearing a superhero cape. As time passes Valentina has visions of her father and stubbornly refuses to accept that he has passed away. The adults in this film seem to circulate around her and do not grasp her difficulties in comprehending her father’s passing. She begins to skip school and visit the river where she imagines her father now resides. After a painful classroom scene where Valentina finally realizes that her father will never return, she refrains from eating, drinking, and even speaking. The once vivacious, playful Valentina disappears, becoming a shell of herself, while her mother and siblings desperately try to cure her through various Mixtec healing practices including a sweat bath. Valentina or the Serenity tenderly captures the many stages of grief as experienced by this spirited young girl. The film is well-cast, and the acting is exceptional in every scene. The youthful actress in the role of Valentina manifests her grief with hauntingly soulful eyes and gives a convincing performance. Cinematographer Carlos Correa incorporates beautiful views of the rural Mexican landscape which include detailed closeups of various insects, dynamic underwater scenes, and sequences with colorful flowers. In Spanish and Mixtec with English subtitles, this film is available in a variety of formats that can include public performance rights. Valentina or the Serenity is highly recommended for college courses in such disciplines as Indigenous Studies, Latin American Studies, Spanish, and even Psychology as it eloquently depicts the multilayered, complexities of grieving. It is a film everyone will relate to at some moment in their lives. Awards:LASA Film Festival, Award of Merit in Film; Best Film, Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival’ Best Actress, Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival