Prayers for the Stolen. Roger Ebert gives this film a double thumbs up, saying, “Of all of the things Tatiana Huezo captures in “Prayers for the Stolen,” her first narrative feature, the terror of the night is most unnerving.

Huezo brings her documentary background to this fictionalized tale of an all-too-real humanitarian crisis unfolding in Mexico, the ongoing war between the government and the cartels, the rampant human rights abuses, the drug business, the international sex trafficking business. In many cases the “police” are either helpless against the cartels or work in concert with them. Thousands and thousands of people have been “disappeared,” with women and girls making up a significant percentage. They are abducted from their homes, often in broad daylight, and sold into sex trafficking or murdered. Their dead bodies are used to terrorize others into compliance. Boys and men are not exempt, often forced into working for the cartels, or to “give up” the female members of their family.”