Something no one tells you about leaving your homeland is that, just like you can never step into the same river twice, returning doesn’t mean belonging again.
Halfway through Diego Luna’s latest effort as a director, “Ashes” (“Cenizas en la boca”), an understandably angsty teenager, Diego (Sergio Bautista), tells his sister Lucila (Anna Díaz), “It’s all the same. Here or wherever, it’s all just surviving.” He’s talking about Barcelona, where she now lives. His harsh remarks cut deep because, at his young age, he’s already become aware that for working-class, dark-skinned people from a developing country, the world has perpetual limitations, whether they go back home or remain in a far-off land of deceitful promise.
Luna assembles the drama from pivotal scenes, drawing on Brenda Navarro’s 2022 novel “Cenizas en la boca,” resulting in a tight yet potent narrative that addresses migration, abandonment, and the constant sense of displacement that plagues immigrants. Lucila and Diego migrated from Mexico City to Madrid, Spain, years after their mother, Isabel (“Emilia Pérez’s” Adriana Paz), moved there, leaving them behind until she could bring them along.
Now, Lucila works as a nanny for a Spanish woman who doesn’t much hide her dislike for Latin American workers. As she did back in Mexico, the young woman serves as a maternal figure to Diego, even though they live with their mother. The teenage boy gets in trouble at school repeatedly as he fights off bullies who insult him because he’s Mexican. “Ashes” quickly makes clear that the lack of language barrier in Spain doesn’t make the transition easier for them, given the xenophobia and racism that permeates Spanish society.
That Lucila hides what she does for a living from her white, English-speaking “boyfriend” also speaks about the disparities that, for those born into privilege, remain unseen. He thinks she is a student, and while she might want to do that, her reality demands she take on multiple, low-paying jobs. Though never explicitly stated, “Ashes” displays a strong class consciousness through the situations Lucila experiences and how characters from an entirely different context react to her. And that’s despite the fact that, by the characters’ own admission, they migrated to Spain with all the appropriate documentation.
But socially relevant gloom is not the sole mode of “Ashes.” Lucila finds community in other Latin American women who work similar jobs, and eventually moves in with some of them, leaving Madrid for Barcelona. Paz imbues Lucila with both an unwavering resilience and an effervescence expected of her youth. There are instances of playful sibling banter between Lucila and Diego that capture them beyond the predicaments they face. Late in the picture, a display of kindness from the elderly Catalan woman Lucila looks after introduces an unexpected reciprocity of care — even with those unfamiliar with her sorrows and the intricacies of her cultural background.
A longtime collaborator of Luna, cinematographer Damián García (“Narcos: Mexico,” “Andor”) employs an unassuming, in-the-moment style to follow Lucila’s fast-paced, nonstop days in Madrid and then Barcelona. And yet, the frames most likely to stick with the viewer are the first and last. The movie is bookended by nearly identical shots looking outside an apartment window that visually connect Lucila and Isabel and their respective journeys in and out of Mexico, as part of the same emotional timeline. They are closer than they think, though most of their exchanges are coated with long-brewing anger.
Central to the story is this resentment between mother and daughter. The distance that has separated them for long, even now that they share geographical location, is deeper and wider than the Atlantic Ocean that once physically divided them. Because migrating isn’t just about starting over elsewhere, but who you leave behind, who they become in your absence, and who you grow into away from them. It’s a shared loneliness for Lucila and Diego, who remained in Mexico for several years, and for Isabel, unable to see them, and yet they can’t seem to offer each other grace because outside pressures breed frustrations.
That’s why a late scene between Diaz and Paz burns like a fiery acting tête-à-tête. Throughout “Ashes,” multiple characters ask another to withhold information, to not snitch on them, to not say what they should. In this moment, the two women lay it all out, and that simplicity of verbalizing exactly what they mean is riveting and moving. When tragedy takes Lucila back to Mexico, what she finds is not exactly welcoming but alienating. Her grandparents still live there, and though she recognizes the rooms and neighbors, she no longer feels at home. Violence is latent there, a reminder of why many others also leave.
The titular ashes do appear on screen. But when Lucila holds and consumes them, they are not only the remains of a loved one, but what’s left of the past as she knew. It’s all gone.
The tonal subtlety of “Ashes,” which doesn’t undermine its quietly heartbreaking poignancy, showcases an artistic maturity on Luna’s part. There’s a sensitivity to his choices that speaks both of an inherent understanding of the characters as a Mexican national (the dialogue and flashes of humor ring natural) and of a humble interest in depicting circumstances that don’t directly affect him but shape the lives of many of his less fortunate compatriots. “Ashes” doesn’t feel like a typical immigration tale, not because of where it takes place, but because of the nuance of emotion that fuels it.
For those of us who’ve left our homeland, sometimes it’s a challenge to put into words what it feels like to never feel at home ever again, neither here nor there. Home, for Lucila and many of us, has to be found not in a space to return to or depart from, but enduring within.
Grade: A-
“Ashes” premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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