THE ABSENT (LOS AUSENTES) World Cinema

One of the notable voices of New Mexican Cinema, director Nicolás Pereda (GREATEST HITS, AFI FEST 2012) returns to the festival with this moody modern parable about existence. An elderly man lives alone in an isolated cabin deep in the Mexican woods. When a bureaucratic problem calls into question his home ownership, he loses not only his property but also his grip on reality. Mentally unmoored, he wanders into the forest and into his own past. Moving in traveling shots through the film’s three key locations (the cabin, the forest and a beach), dreamlike cinematography renders THE ABSENT a visually captivating work on human existence, memory and loss.