Identifying Features is available to watch on BFI Player.
âWhat did he gain by leaving?â Two months have passed since Jesús (Juan Jesús Varela) left his small town in central Mexico on foot with his friend Rodrigo to search for work across the US border. Having heard no word from the teenager since, his mother Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández) sets out on a journey to find her son and uncover the truth.Â
As of November 2020, the Mexican government reported over 75,000 missing citizens. Thousands more so reported every year are eventually found, not always alive. Migrants crossing the country towards the US border often fall prey to criminal cartels while others are kidnapped from their homes and extorted for money or brutally assaulted and left for dead. With morgues piling up with unidentified bodies and little support from government authorities, families are often left to investigate on their own or perform the grim task of digging the ground to searching for remains. In Identifying Features, Fernanda Valadez examines the devastation wrought upon those surviving relatives through the eyes of a desperate mother, highlighting the psychological impact of living not knowing the fate of your loved one and with no body to mourn.