This brilliant first feature from Dominga Sotomayor represents a cinematic rarity: a road movie told from the vantage point of the backseat. On a four-day family car trip, young Lucía (the phenomenal Santi Ahumada) finds the monotony of the passing landscape counter-pointed by the rapidly changing relationship between her parents. While her younger brother remains blissfully unaware of the awkward silences, she’s keenly attuned to the tension in the air. Consequently, this supposed vacation offers few moments of youthful abandon. Even when allowed to ride atop the car, she can’t keep from glancing through the windshield and seeing her parents’ marriage unravelling a little more.

Working with masterful cinematographer Bárbara Álvarez (The Headless Woman, VIFF 09), Sotomayor displays incredible assurance in holding her shots, allowing moods to shift or steep over the course of minutes. Furthermore, she adroitly choreographs the action within those immaculate compositions. The drama routinely unfolds on two fronts, with the foreground and background telling very different stories. Delivering close-quarters drama at its most affecting, this film "says and conveys more substance with a seemingly casual glance than most action-packed vehicles… This is a film of little gestures and brief looks, caught almost as if by chance by Bárbara Álvarez’s perspicacious camera, and it’s the accumulation of small incidents that give Thursday its power."—Jay Weissberg, Variety