In “Jardines del Bosque,” brothers Diego and Alex Barragán drink from the fountain of classic coming-of-agers such as Rob Reiner’s “Stand by Me” and Sofia Coppola’s “The Virgin Suicides” with a touch of great horrors like George Sluizer’s “The Vanishing” to craft a genre-bending look at the normalization of violence in their home country of Mexico. Six years in the making, the film now has its world premiere at the Raindance Film Festival.
“Jardines del Bosque” is narrated by three adult friends — Santos (Maximiliano Nájar Márquez), Lechuga (Beto Ramirez) and Daniela (Daphne Mendez) — in the present day as they look back to the fateful summer of 2014, when their neighbor and friend Arlette (Fiona Palomo, from Netflix hit series “Outer Banks”) mysteriously went missing. The trio, preteens at the time, became obsessed with the story, embarking on an increasingly dangerous game of cat and mouse that had them submerged in the criminal underbelly of Guadalajara.
Speaking with Variety ahead of the premiere, Alex recalls joining his brother as a co-writer and co-director on the project back in 2020 after “immediately connecting” with the story. “While we didn’t experience the exact events portrayed in the film, we both grew up around similar realities. From the beginning, our goal was to tell an honest and empathetic story about how violence can quietly shape young people’s lives.”
