Three Movies About Kids Finding Their Way Through Hard Times

This week, Carlos Aguilar takes us into three very distinct worlds, all centered on young people facing difficult circumstances. In “El tren fluvial,” “Brownsville Bred,” and “La jauría,” kids are forced to navigate situations they didn’t choose, but each story approaches those experiences with a different tone and mood. One is a heartfelt coming-of-age drama, another takes a surreal turn, and the third is much darker, exploring the cycles of violence that have shaped its young characters. What makes this group of films interesting together is not what they have in common, but how differently they tell a youth-focused story.

Happy Watching,

— Vanessa

Earlier this year, Argentine filmmaker Lucas A. Vignale passed away tragically in an accident. This dreamlike tale, which he co-directed with Lorenzo Ferro, stands as the final statement in his young artistic legacy. It follows nine-year-old Milo (Milo Barría), whose father forces him to practice the malambo folk dance. One day, to escape the pressures at home, the boy puts sleeping pills in his family's dinner and escapes to the city by train, embarking on a journey that will put him in contact with a myriad of peculiar characters. A film that initially appears as a documentary, with its deceiving realism, evolves into a magical-realist curio.

Playing at the AFI Latin American Film Festival in Silver Spring, Maryland, on September 27.

After multiple iterations on screen and on stage, Elaine del Valle’s heartfelt, autobiographical coming-of-age drama has reached its final form as a feature-length film. In 1980s New York, young Elaine (Nathalia Lares) admires her musician father, Manny (Javier Muñoz), a musically inclined Puerto Rican man with issues she can’t yet understand. When Manny must separate from the family, Elaine’s world is upended. Populated with moving performances and shot between NYC and Puerto Rico, this independent project—a period piece no less—is an impressive outing for Del Valle.

Streaming on multiple platforms.

— By Carlos Aguilar

The piercing, rage-filled eyes of Eliú (Jhojan Estiven Jimenez), looking directly into the camera as if he were breaking the fourth wall and demanding our acknowledgment, are the defining image of the searing Colombian coming-of-age drama “La jauría” (The Pack).

In reality, Eliú, a teenager and part of a makeshift rehabilitation program, is not looking at us but into a cave where he and his friend El Mono (Maicol Andrés Jimenez) hid the body of a man they killed, a crime that landed them both in prison and eventually in this group for troubled young men. Writer-director Andrés Ramírez Pulido creates an ominous atmosphere throughout that makes "La jauría" feel bleak, both thematically and in how the images depict the inescapable cycles of violence the young characters are part of.