Six months after the death of Lucía in a car accident, her husband Roberto and daughter Alejandra move to Mexico City to make a fresh start as they struggle to come to terms with their loss. The beautiful and intelligent Alejandra soon finds herself the target of her new classmates’ jealousy, but feels unable to share her troubles with her grieving father. When the schoolyard pack mentality identifies her as a weak prey, the bullying behaviour escalates towards a shocking finale.
Veteran ¡Viva! filmgoers who saw Michel Franco’s debut feature Daniel and Ana in our 2010 edition will know he pulls no punches. Después de Lucía was the Mexican submission to the Oscars, it won the Un Certain Regard at Cannes, and the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival ‘for being a film of great simplicty and restraint, that nevertheless moved and shocked the jury’.