The Exiles (Los tortuga)

Grief is a slippery, untamed thing, it twists, and haunts the corners of our lives. In The Exiles, director Belén Funes conjures a gut-punching tale of a mother and daughter tethered by loss yet torn apart by the messy, mismatched ways they mourn. Delia (Antonia Zegers, Post-mortem, El club), a Chilean immigrant barely keeping her head above water as a Barcelona cab driver, slams the door on her husband’s absence.

Meanwhile, her daughter Ana bears its weight. As eviction looms and their relationship frays, their exile becomes both literal and internal. With a cinematography that shrouds its characters in the heavy silence of the unspoken, The Exiles is a meditation on mourning, migration, and the fragile possibility of healing.