After breaking out with the drama Ixcanul, Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante returned with the back-to-back features Temblores and La Llorona on the festival circuit the past year. The lattermost film, which played at TIFF, Venice, Sundance, London, and more, is now arriving in the U.S. next month via Shudder and the new trailer and poster have landed. Starring María Mercedes Coroy, Margarita Kénefic, Sabrina De La Hoz, and Julio Diaz, the film explores the scars of the Guatemalan Civil War in formally stunning, atmospheric ways.
Dan Mecca said in our review, “Ever since Hannah Arendt coined the term “the banality of evil” in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem, it’s been a phrase oft-used in an attempt to describe how seemingly rational humans can do truly awful things. One recalls Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary The Act of Killing or Chris Weitz’s Operation Finale in recent years. Director Jayro Bustamante wades in these same waters with La Llorona, an effective slow-burn that uses thriller tropes to explore the lingering scars of the Guatemalan Civil War.”
See the trailer and poster below.
Indignant retired general Enrique finally faces trial for the genocidal massacre of thousands of Mayans decades ago. As a horde of angry protestors threatens to invade their opulent home, the women of the house—his haughty wife, conflicted daughter, and precocious granddaughter—weigh their responsibility to shield the erratic, senile Enrique against the devastating truths being publicly revealed and the increasing sense that a wrathful supernatural force is targeting them for his crimes. Meanwhile, much of the family’s domestic staff flees, leaving only loyal housekeeper Valeriana until a mysterious young Indigenous maid arrives.
La Llorona arrives on Shudder on August 6.