“Ana is looking at herself as she’s being watched from the observing point of view of a CCTV camera. She’s featured as an awkward red dot invading the lower corner of the small screen. Ana has decided to make the best of it and to retake control of her life: a new haircut and starting to drive the car again. Yet everyone in her family seems to question her ability to do so—and what is worse: they might be right.

As the original title, Lo que no se dice bajo el sol, reveals, not much is said out loud in Eduardo Esquivel’s short film. However, the filmmaker’s care for detail in this seemingly loose narrative conveys many subtle truths through looks and silences, all rendered in an essentially neo-realistic cinematographic style. Its tender frankness works in more ways than one. When Ana is taking her kids to spend an afternoon at grandma’s on a seemingly normal day, her actions play out as an ordeal within the quest to revalue herself as an independent woman while facing the cruelties of her closest family members. Amidst a chatty background and a heart-wrenching soundtrack, many things are left unsaid. Under the Sun quite literally pays tribute to Lucrecia Martel’s La ciénaga and more sun-drenched Latin-American cinema.

How Esquivel’s cinematic style wonderfully captures Ana’s sad summer day is a great example of how cinema can elevate the human condition. Though filmic worlds apart, Emmanuel Marre’s protagonist in The Summer Movie, a French man looking for a new purpose in life, has a lot in common with Esquivel’s Mexican divorced woman. Both characters go on summer road trips that serve as midlife coming-of-age journeys to redefine their identity.” — Nina Rodríguez