The year is 1986, and World Cup fever has hit Mexico. Carlos (Xabiani Ponce de León) and Gera (José Antonio Toledano) are two best friends from middle-class families who are starting to feel out of place in their sheltered, entitled milieu. But then they discover a liberating, mysterious world of art, drugs, and sex amid the underground clubs of Mexico City.

Hari Sama's electrifying coming-of-age tale doesn't take the traditional route for this type of story. Rather, the film eventually comes to embody the anarchic, hedonistic spirit of experimental post-punk excess—transforming into a kaleidoscopic portrait of avant-garde art, direct-action protest, queer awakening, and the dizzying, dangerous freedom of a world seemingly without rules. It's the age of AIDS, and right-wing conformism, but the film is neither cautionary tale nor nostalgia trip. Anchored by marvelous performances from its young cast, and Sama's assured, inventive sense of style, it's a picture suffused in both historical perspective and a forward-looking sense of the possible.

—Bilge Ebiri

Directed by

Hari Sama