User Reviews

This short film was beautifully shocking in all of its entirety. It brings you into the world of these doomed young women every step of the way, right up to the tragic ending. I saw this film in a theatre and the scope of this horrific situation sat with everyone through the end credits and still has not left me. I hope justice finds these young souls that were taken too soon, and I'm happy filmmakers like Bryan Buckley and Matt Lefebvre are bringing light to these situations.

"Saria" is an American live action short film from 2019 and this one was nominated for an Oscar last night, but not one of the favorites to win, so not a big surprise that the trophy went to another nominee. I was lucky enough to watch all five nominees last night and as for this one here, I'd say it is only fourth in my personal ranking. The film is in Spanish by the way, so you may need subtitles for this one here unless you are not just a native English speaker. It runs for slightly over 20 minutes and was the longest from the nominees, even if only a minute longer than the actual inner. The writer and director is Brian Buckley, already an Oscar nominee before this film here, even if we have to go back many years for his first inclusion. Saria is one of the girls we see in this movie. It is about a bunch of young females living in Guatemala (this Spanish) and they are living in an orphanage. The conditions are really bad and with that I am not (only) talking about the housing, but about how they are treated by those in charge. The best example is that they are woken up in a really rude manner possible every morning, not only with the rod on the beds, but they are called whores. Not a good thing to hear as the very first word in the morning. There clearly isn't any love beteen them and their "masters" (you could almost say) and they treat them really poorly. The consequence is that the young girls are no longer willing to take the physical and emotional abuse and decide to step up. Start a revolt and flee from their "prison". There is some bloodshed during this revolt and also a pretty memorable camera sht with one of the humiliated being up there having control over a worker from this orphanage, but she chooses the human non-violent way out. Obviously, they are just girls on the run though, and not much later they are caught again. On the road, we get a little love story that feels as half-baked as everything else about this film sadly and the younger girl saying that she now can't wait to fall in love either (after seeing what it made with her friend) did not feel half as touching to me as it was intended to unfortunately. More for the sake of it. There is of course a tragic reference immediately linked to this statement because at the end we find out there is a big fire that kills almost all the young women because their masters did not open the door to let them out. If it as intentional (because of the revolt) or just a horrible accident or simply negligence, we will never find out. The film here tries to convince us it as one evil warden who is to blame. Oh well, I do not know how much this (or anything else in this film) has to do with the truth and what actually happened. I must say this film did not feel as a tribute to the fallen for me, but just taking this horrible catastrophe to make their film more known and I really cannot support that. The connection between this movie, the plot and the disaster feels way too vague for me too appreciate. As a consequence, I give the outcome here a thumbs-down. Not deserving of the Oscar nomination. There is so little in here for over 20 minutes and the ending can only make the more simple viewers forget about that. Watch something else instead.