Las Desaparecidas

Cortometraje dirigido por Astrid Dominguez y Producido por Cinefotógrafa Sandra De Silva De La Torre y Hayley Surgenor Ganá en Melbourne Film Festival el premio Swinburne Award for Emerging Australian Filmmaker

Jury Statement: Raw, fulfilled and impactful. Director Astrid Dominguez Ortega has managed to achieve in short-film length a story that feels at once ancient and urgent, and part of a much bigger narrative. Set in Mexico and centreing on the dangers of being a teenage girl in a patriarchal society, the VCA Film 2017 graduate has created a film that is part parable and part thriller, but at its core beautifully and terrifyingly human. The film is tightly wound around the performance of Patricia Menses and, like her performance, it never dwells upon sentimentality but instead marches inexorably toward its chilling conclusion. This is cinema worth talking about and a masterful debut from a filmmaker to watch.