By Day and By Night(Alejandro Molina, 2010):Mexico

Reviewed by Cody Christianson. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

By Day and By Night was the best foreign film that I saw at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. By Day and By Night was a Science Fiction film, which was directed by Alejandro Molina. This film was shot in Mexico and the language spoken was Spanish with English Subtitles, and was approximately 90 minutes long.

The main characters were Aurora, who was usually in a Melancholy mood because her daughter disappeared overnight, and Urbano. The setting of the story was in the distant future in the  Metropolis somewhere in Mexico. The planet has become overcrowded and is running out of Necessary resources(Food, and Water). To fix this major problem, a big decision is made by the Leaders. The decision they made was to split the population in half. To do this they put half of the population to sleep during the day, while the other half are awake during the night, and vice versa, the people awake during the day are never meant to interact with the people awake during the night. Aurora woke up one night to find her daughter mysteriously gone without a trace, Aurora thinks the Leaders are behind this heinous disappearance.

The moral of the story was Hope. This is the moral because Aurora never stopped looking for her daughter. I really liked this moral because hope is what makes us drive further than we’ve ever gone before. It is what makes us live happily, without hope, we would have nothing to live for.

I really like the Cinematography, especially the Close and Long shots in the metropolis, they were phenomenal. The acting wasn’t he very best but I’d still recommend everyone to watch it at least once.