Directed by Fernanda Valadez
Written by Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero
Starring Mercedes Hernández
Running time: 1 hour and 35 minutes

by Billy Russell, Staff Writer

Three migrant boys venture to the United States and all three go missing. Two ventured up to Arizona together on a bus, looking for work, to start their own lives. One had come to the States four years ago, never to be heard from since. All three are presumed dead.

Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández) and her friend, whose son also went missing, go to the authorities. Because the boys left with permission, there is no crime to report, the authorities tell them. They then hand the mothers a book to look through: a crudely thrown-together three-ring binder with photos of recently discovered dead bodies up near the border. Magdalena’s friend gasps and sobs. Her son has been murdered.

The mother who knows the fate of her child, according to Identifying Features is the lucky one. The mother whose child has been missing for years, the authorities keep trying to call her down to identify corpses with faceless features, or have been so badly burned beyond recognition, it would be impossible to identify. The bureaucratic task force assigned to identifying dead bodies to missing people are hoping for desperate, depressed families to simply sign a form so that they have one less thing to worry about. She tells Magdalena to never sign that form, because they want permission to stop looking. Magdalena travels north toward the border town where her son and his friend were last seen. These scenes with her following in her son’s footsteps, retracing where he’s been, asking the locals if what they know, what they’ve seen, have an all-too-real feel to them. The footage looks like it was grabbed without permits. It has the same type of hyperrealism of a young Scorsese picture, living in the moment of a time and a place, rather than just being about it. Miguel (David Illescas) has been detained and deported back to Mexico. Miguel and Magdalena help each other on their journeys. She is looking for her son, and he is looking for his mother.

Identifying Features is a very well-told movie about a specific event that is really about a larger event, a synecdoche of an allegory. Magdalena’s missing child is about all of the missing migrants who head up north, never to be heard from again. The more she finds out, the more insidious the serpentine plot begins to unfold. People whisper in hushed tones and speak where no one can overhear them. The bus was potentially stopped and robbed, as so many buses on the same route had been, with the passengers taken out and murdered. And those who weren’t murdered were forced into a fate worse than death. A fate so worse than death that it defies human nature as we know it. Imagery of devils appears forth from the flames of a fire. Equating the penchant of inhumanity humans are capable of to a supernatural element of pure evil is the only way for it to make sense.

Fernanda Valdez directs the film with confidence. There are a lot of tones that the film shifts back and forth with, without any feeling of tonal whiplash. It is a very realistic film in parts, especially in establishing the frustrating bureaucracy and its complete disinterest in helping these women find closure on their missing, or dead, children. It is also a terrifying film, dealing with lots of ugliness that people are capable of, the complete horror of cartel gangs and their murder sprees that have left entire towns desolate. It is also a hopeful film, not one that wallows in despair when it uncovers many of these realities. It looks at these horrors without succumbing to a defeatist attitude, like, “If this is humanity, what is the point?” The point isn’t the misery, or the possibility of these awful things, it’s in the love that propelled Magdalena to continue her search. It’s in the hope that Miguel was able to help her, and they both saw their missing family in each other. She saw her son in him, and he saw his mother in her. The movie isn’t about the cartel gangs that murder innocents. It’s about the people who keep looking even though they know what danger they’re in.

Every day, migrants entering the United States go missing and die--oftentimes in the desert, from hunger, thirst and the harsh elements. Organizations like No More Deaths (No Más Muertes) provide humanitarian aid and shelter to migrants. To learn more about this organization, please visit: nomoredeaths.org

Identifying Features opens theatrically this Friday.