NEW ORDER (NUEVO ORDEN) World Cinema

Following the film, AFI FEST Senior Programmer Claudia Puig leads a conversation with filmmaker Michel Franco.

This unflinching, provocative and riveting sociopolitical thriller depicts society at a terrifying breaking point. Class warfare has erupted into widespread chaotic violence in this essential story of an attempted overthrow of the privileged ruling class in contemporary Mexico City. The repercussions of colonialism, a vast imbalance of power and massive income inequality have sparked the uprising, symbolized here by the clash of wealthy white wedding guests with the brown-skinned staff that serve them. This is an urgent, timely and believably dystopian depiction of a coup d’état that is unsparing and unsettling. Mexican writer-director Michel Franco brilliantly sets up the insufferably casual ease of the rich and privileged, then shatters it powerfully. Woman and children of all classes seem to suffer the most collateral damage in this nuanced, harrowing and thoroughly relevant film.
–Claudia Puig