The Naked Room - True/False Film Fest

The Naked Room

This minimalist wonder from True Vision recipient Nuria Ibáñez Castañeda empathetically observes tormented children in therapy sessions.
Director: Nuria Ibáñez Castañeda
Runtime: 1:10
In-person: Director Nuria Ibáñez Castañeda
Fest Year: 2019
This year’s True Vision Award recipient, Nuria Ibáñez Castañeda, films her second feature entirely within a children’s therapy office in Mexico. Ibáñez Castañeda’s intimate, unobtrusively tight camera sinks into the background as the kids’ stories and struggles with trauma pierce your soul. Anger, abuse, sadness, and abandonment trickles out of their eyes and into broken sentences as they’re prodded by the doctors. Their faces—as memorable as any classic portrait—reveal their vulnerability and serve as a mirror to contemporary Mexican society. Their suffering, however, also has given these remarkable children a clarity and wisdom beyond their years. This anthropological depiction of the adolescent mind and its struggle for survival challenges the core of our neurotypical ideas of courage. (SA)