A MONSTER WITH A THOUSAND HEADS (UN MONSTRUO DE MIL CABEZAS) World Cinema

When Sonia receives the news that without immediate medical attention the fate of her cancer-stricken husband is sealed, she races to track down his indifferent doctor. This fruitless encounter sets off a chain of increasingly violent confrontations between a distraught, gun-toting Sonia, her confused teenage son and a series of uncaring insurance-company stakeholders and bureaucrats who decide matters of life and death with the stroke of a pen. In a vein similar to last year’s TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT (AFI FEST 2014), Uruguayan director Rodrigo Plá (THE ZONE) crafts this sharp, darkly comic tale of a Mexican Everywoman caught in the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of a profit-driven insurance establishment with an undeniable sense of urgency and an eye toward social justice. Adapted by Laura Santullo from her novel and anchored by Jana Raluy’s force-of-nature performance, it is an experience that anyone who’s ever felt helpless in the face of a corporate monolith will make their own. — Cedar Sherbert