By Ramona Flume
Lead actor Adriana Paz received a rousing standing ovation at the post-screening Q&A of The Huntress (La Cazadora), which premiered Thursday, January 22, in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
“I do not know if I’ll be able to talk,” Paz (Emilia Pérez) said, visibly emotional as she stepped up to the mic. “I’m shaking… and I was crying.” Writer-director Suzanne Andrews Correa (Green, 2019 Sundance Film Festival) jumps in to explain, “That was the first time she’s seen the movie.” The audience collectively gasped and broke out into another round of applause before Andrews Correa continued on in praise of Paz, who was joined by more than a dozen of her cast and crew members onstage after the film’s premiere. “You really brought this to life, and you break my heart every time I see it. This film wouldn’t be what it is without you.”
Based on the real-life story of “Diana, the Huntress of Bus Drivers,” Andrews Correa’s debut feature film (workshopped in the Sundance Labs) is a gripping tale of retribution and vigilante justice. It recounts the harrowing experiences of a lone female assassin accused of killing two Juárez, Mexico men in 2013 who violently assaulted her and other women on their bus routes.
Paz dazzles as Luz, the tormented mother and sexual assault survivor driven to desperate measures in a battle to find justice for herself — and all the other missing and murdered women in her border town. “My body didn’t know it was fiction,” Paz responds to an audience member’s question about the physical and mental toll of inhabiting such a traumatized character. “I have to confess my health has been affected a little bit. But I’m so grateful because I think it’s a privilege to portray a character like this… I was checking my Instagram during one of our last scenes on the bus, and I felt [Suzanne] got mad because maybe she was thinking I was getting distracted — and I thought, yes, because I needed it.”
The immersive setting and subject matter Andrews Correa depicts is certainly difficult. Ciudad Juárez in the mid-2010s was a dangerous time and place, especially for women, whose raped and mutilated bodies were routinely dumped in the deserts outside of the city center. Many of them were last seen boarding a public bus, and their disappearances were never properly investigated by local authorities.
In Andrews Correa’s true-to-life thriller (filmed in Juárez), Luz lives on the edge of a double-edged sword, oscillating between the hunter and the hunted as she runs from a dogged homicide investigator, Rosales (played by the talented Guillermo Alonso), and her own disorienting flashbacks, all while keeping tabs on her teenage daughter Alejandra (Jennifer Trejo). We watch as she’s forced into a crisis of conscience, confronting her dueling motivations to find (and hide from) justice in a society that is unwilling to protect or defend women.
Luz navigates the oppressive powers-at-large, from the factory where she works to the bus routes where she feels in danger of becoming another “desaparecida” on a daily basis — until she takes matters in her own hands.
Still, despite the darkness depicted in Andrews Correa’s Huntress, she says portraying hope was her film’s major objective. “What was really brought home in this film is that change starts from the bottom up,” says the writer-director. “And the way that these women came together to change their community with empathy, with compassion, with strength, with fearlessness, was incredible for me.”
“Where there is shadow, there is always light,” Andrews Correa continues. “It’s at the core of what this film is about. One of the things I was most inspired by in Juárez was how much hope there is. It’s a border city that draws people from all over for a better life. That just leads to amazing things. Despite this — because of this — those bonds between people are both shadow and light. You can’t have one without the other. It’s the most important part of the movie for me.”
