Julio Mendez

Mona picks up her first job tutoring two orphaned children living in a derelict house in the country. Her obsession with trying to educate these two nearly feral children blinds her to the fact they have other plans for her.

Short film by Manuel Herreros de Lemos.

They Returned is a beautifully touching and unnerving story about the unexplained disappearance of three children, two boys and one girl, and their reappearance three days later in a semi-autistic state. Not even the children themselves are able to help anyone understand what happened.

A nine-year-old boy’s preening obsession with straightening his hair elicits a tidal wave of homophobic panic in his hard-working mother, in this tender but clear-eyed coming-of-age tale.