TÓTEM (15)

Lila Avilés leaves behind the cramped hotel rooms of her 2018 debut The Chambermaid but continues to use interior spaces to define relationships. Seven-year-old Sol spends the day at her grandfather’s home, helping her aunts Nuri and Alejandra with the preparations for a surprise party they are throwing for Sol’s father, Tonatiuh. We see and hear the adult world in snatches, fragments, and intense detail through Sol’s senses. As daylight fades, a strange and chaotic atmosphere takes over, shattering the bonds that hold a family together. Sol gradually comes to understand that her world is about to change dramatically, letting go and grasping onto life in the same breath.