Tough and sinewy work from writer-director Maryse Sistach. Set in Mexico City, it shows a teenage girl, Yessica (Ximena Ayala) in constant trouble at school, expelled from one for slapping the principal and in trouble at the next for fighting with boys. She finds unlikely friendship with quiet, studious Miriam (Nancy Gutierrez) but is unable to tell her the terrible secret that makes her boil with perpetual, self-destructive rage - her stepbrother is forcing her to be regularly raped by his buddy, from whom he gets money to buy trainers, ironically sold to him by Miriam's mother, working hard at a shoe shop to make ends meet.

This is a grimly powerful, unsentimental picture, not least in showing what a battleground school can be, and its perceptible edge of soap melodrama drives the narrative on to a horrible conclusion. Ayala gives an excellent performance as Yessica, seething with anger and incomprehension at what is happen ing to her: sometimes far older than her years as she realises that her mother and stepfather will do nothing to help her, sometimes as playful as an eight-year-old as she comes round to hang out with her new friend Miriam. Another substantial movie from the new Latin wave.