Ane is Missing

David Pérez Sañudo’s genre-weaving debut feature is a gripping mystery, political drama and probing psychological study. Lide works as a security guard at a railway construction site, a project that has unleashed a wave of protests. As she returns home after a long night shift, she discovers that her teenage daughter, Ane, is nowhere to be found. Looking through Ane’s things, she gradually realises that her daughter is a member of a radical activist group that has been linked to violent clashes with police. Fearing the worst, Lide starts her own investigation and will stop at nothing to find her daughter.

The conflict of the film, the social and political conflict, the arrival of a high-speed train that means the expropriation of land and properties, serves as an icon, a visual image, to reflect on communication… The film straddles the line between a drama and a thriller. It’s a border film in all aspects, not just because it’s on the border of two genres but also because it’s frontier land. The train project raises frontiers. Ane’s age, 17, marks another frontier. There’s a border between what happens inside and outside of the home; so the style has to reflect this fractured sense.

Director David Perez Sanudo, from an interview with Variety