Reinas
Directed by Klaudia Reynicke
Written by Klaudia Reynicke, Diego Vega
Starring Abril Gjurinovic, Luana Vega, Jimena Lindo, Gonzalo Molina
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour 44 minutes
In NY and LA theaters November 29

by Jill Vranken, Staff Writer

“Give your dad a hug, my queens.”

Lima, Peru, 1992. Amidst a backdrop of intense political and economical unrest, sisters Aurora (Luana Vega) and Lucía (Abril Gjurinovic) prepare to move away from Lima with their mother, Elena (Jimena Lindo) who has secured a job in the United States. When the girls’ estranged and distant father, Carlos (Gonzalo Molina), unexpectedly turns up at Aurora’s birthday party, Elena is bemused, but allows him to stay.

Elena reminds Carlos that in order for the girls (both minors) to fly with her to their new home, he needs to provide signed and notarised authorisation. She ushers Carlos back into the girls’ lives, allowing him to visit them and take them out of the house, away from the stress of moving. The sisters are initially reluctant to hang out with him, given that he is both unreliable and a complete mystery to them. They have no idea what he actually does for a living (and Carlos is not keen to tell them the full truth) or where he even lives, and when he promises to take the girls to the beach, he turns up two days late with no real explanation.

The movie which spins out from this set-up is a beautifully humane coming-of-age drama, anchored by a quartet of strong performances (Vega and Gjurinovic are both delightful to watch and wholeheartedly believable as sisters) and effective, deft direction from Klaudia Reynicke.

Reynicke’s Lima feels deeply personal, a vibrant and alive memory of the city she was born in, interwoven with the very real nightmares the country and its citizens experienced in the 90s. The film opens with a news report, the anchor solemnly reading out the revised (and spectacularly higher) prices of basic necessities such as bread. At Aurora’s birthday party, a power outage forces people to get candles (the implication being that this has been happening a lot). There are a number of mentions of friends and family who have already left for similar reasons. A curfew is in place in the city, something that becomes of high importance late in the film, when the sisters go looking for their dad after dark. Increased police presence looms large in the background, and the threat of car bombs and armed conflict is ever present.

It is understandable then, that Elena is keen to leave and take her daughters to a safer life. But Carlos feels a previously dormant sense of fatherly responsibility awaken as he spends more time with the girls. And it’s not long before Aurora and Lucía themselves start having doubts about the future ahead of them.

In an interview with critic Carolyn Hinds, Reynicke spoke about how the intensity of a moment (in this case, the moment of “almost-departure” as the sisters are on the verge of leaving, possibly for good) can bring to the surface all kinds of new and surprising feelings. In the case of the sisters, they both start to thaw towards their dad, finding themselves enjoying spending time together. In the case of Carlos, he surprised himself with that renewed sense of fatherly responsibility, despite his unwillingness (and perhaps even shame) to tell the girls the full truth of his economic situation.

It’s a delicate balancing act of emotions, and one that makes for a compelling, emotional watch. Reinas has been selected as the Swiss submission for the Best International Feature Film at the 2025 Academy Awards; I sincerely hope that it makes the shortlist at the very least. And also that it wins, but we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it, shall we?