Valentina or the Serenity

(Valentina o la serenidad)

Ángeles Cruz / Mexico / 2023 / 85 min
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  • Toronto International Film Festival

  • Huelva Iberoamerican Film Festival

    Best Film, Best Actress

  • Morelia International Film Festival

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Synopsis

Spanish and Mixtec with English subtitles

With Danae Ahuja, Myriam Bravo, Alexander Gadiel

Mexican filmmaker Ángeles Cruz returns to her Indigenous community of Villa Guadalupe for her second feature film, a tenderly poignant tale of loss inspired by her own childhood.

Valentina’s life is shattered when her beloved father drowns in a nearby river. Refusing to accept the body at the funeral as his, Valentina becomes convinced he’s still alive and will return home.

Her conviction deepens when she accidentally falls into the same river and hears his voice speaking in Mixtec, a language she’s never learned. Valentina’s unwavering belief affects her grieving family and begins to impact her schoolwork as she waits by the river for another message, enlisting her friend Pedro to teach her Mixtec.

An exploration of love and mortality from a child’s perspective, Valentina or the Serenity is ultimately an uplifting ode to life.

Related Subjects
About the Director

Ángeles Cruz is a Mexican actress and director of Mixtec origin. She holds an Acting degree from the INBA Escuela de Arte Teatral. Having worked as an actress since 1994, she wrote and directed her first short film, La tiricia o cómo curar la tristeza, in 2012, which won the Ariel Award for Best Short Fiction Film. Her subsequent shorts, La carta (2014) and Arcángel (2018), were nominated for the same prize, with the latter earning her a second win.

Ángeles Cruz - Nudo Mixteco - Valentina or the Serenity

Available for Q&As, Masterclasses, and workshops upon request, in Spanish.
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In 2021, Ángeles Cruz’s feature film debut, Nudo Mixteco (2021), won the Mexican Academy Award for best first feature just after a successful festival run, premiering at the Miami International Film Festival and Rotterdam. Valentina or the Serenity (Valentina o la serenidad, 2023), her second feature, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Throughout her career, Ángeles Cruz has obtained recognition from various festivals around the world, which have rewarded her work carried out mainly in the community from which she originates.

Press

“A refreshing take on death and grief by an industry mostly focused on the violent cartel-related deaths that affect the country.” – Aldo Álvareztostado, International Cinephile Society

“Highly Recommended. 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. (...) It 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.” – Erica Swenson Danowitz, Delaware County Community College, EMRO

“Indigenous Mexican filmmaker Ángeles Cruz (SIFF 2021’s Nudo Mixteco) explores our complex relationship with loss through the eyes of a young Mixtecan girl who, in her heart, refuses to believe her recently deceased father has truly left this earthly realm.” – Hebe Tabachnik, Seattle International Film Festival

“Through playful camerawork and a witty score by Alejandra Hernández and Rubén Luengas, Cruz manages to provide the film with a purity that is only comparable to a child’s perspective on its surrounding world. The relationship with death is regarded as one of the most peculiar traits across the different cultures inhabiting Mexico, and the film, set in a Mixteca community facing the loss of their indigenous language, offers a refreshing take on death and grief by an industry mostly focused on the violent cartel-related deaths that affect the country.” – Aldo Álvareztostado, International Cinephile Society

Notes on the Film

“Valentina or the Serenity is a story of grief, growth, and discovery. It involves a journey where Valentina, a 7-year-old girl, transitions from the loss of her father to the painful acceptance of death.

It addresses the theme of absence through simple, everyday actions that modify the girl’s character, revealing who the “daddy” is in the eyes of his youngest daughter.

A dramatic and playful story that aims to raise awareness about grief and loss, the ñuu savi as the communicating language, the understanding of the first blows of life and what comes with maturing.

From Valentina’s point of view, her small universe is imagination and movement, it is the journey of loss and the acceptance that life goes on.

A game, a painful journey.

I touch on death and how we process loss in childhood. I am moved by how they go on their own accommodating the absence, without any adult stopping to explain it to them.

I went down that road myself when I lost my father at the age of 10 and that event radically changed my destiny.

This story is the beginning of something we never understand: Where do our dead go? And yet, life goes on.”

– Angeles Cruz, Director

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