Say Goodbye

Amid the vast, snow-covered landscapes of Utah, between the mountains and the suburban sprawl of Salt Lake City, a family goes about their daily routine. Rosa, the mother, goes to the car wash. Her daughter, Sol, prepares a meal before logging into an online session with her therapist. Her brother, Javier, also a young adult, plays video games. But gradually, a fourth presence begins to seep into the frame. Javier, the father, deported to Mexico in 2015, before being kidnapped the following year. Renowned editor Paloma López Carrillo makes her directorial debut with this feature-length film. Through a fragmented portrait of the Vargas Carrillo family, she tells a story that echoes her own: a family marked by the disappearance of an uncle, also a desaparecido. Composed mostly of meticulously framed sequence shots, imbued with striking expressive power, the film captures the presence of absence—the way it lingers between words, hides behind gestures, fills the spaces between objects, and reverberates in the silence. Perhaps new rituals will have to be invented, new ways to say goodbye—to the ones who have vanished. Mourad-Anis Moussa