Saria is a 2019 short film (22 minutes) directed by Bryan Buckley.
It is about the events leading up to the infamous 2017 Guatemala orphanage fire
. The Virgen de la Asunción Safe Home is a nightmarish orphanage that is really just a prison by another name. The inmates are locked up at night and woken in the morning (in the girls' dorm, at least) by baton-wielding guards who scream "Wake up, bitches!" The building is filthy, the discipline is brutal, and if that isn't bad enough, sometimes the guards hand out the girls to strangers to rape.
Saria, as it happens, is one of the girls who have been raped. She plots to escape along with her sister, Ximena, with help from Ximena's boyfriend Appo. The girls stage a mass protest on orphanage grounds, and then, when the guards are distracted, Appo leads the boys in attacking them. The children successfully break out of the orphanage but most of them, including the two sisters and Appo, are recaptured. Even worse tragedy follows.
Tropes:
- Based on a True Story: The characters are fictional, but the events leading up to the fire are shown fairly accurately.
- Call-Back: One of the first shots shows a cockroach skittering under the door to a room. At the end a cockroach skitters out from under the room that is on fire, while the girls inside scream with horror.
- The Dead Have Names: The movie ends with a list of the names of all 41 girls killed in the fire.
- Didn't Think This Through: One of the girls sets a fire after being recaptured to try and force the guards into letting them out. The guard, instead of doing so, leaves the door closed (and the girls to die). And the film ends there.
- Downer Ending: Doesn't get much more of a downer than 41 teenaged girls burning to death in a fire.
- Friend to All Living Things: Saria is being forced to mop the restroom when she sees a roach stuck in the water she has dumped on the floor. She picks the roach up and helps it to escape through the window.
- Interrupted by the End: The recaptured girls are being held prisoner in a room too small to accommodate them. One starts a fire, thinking that it will force the guard to let them out. Deysi the sadistic guard sits in her chair rather than open the door to let the girls out...and the film ends, right there, as if a reel got lost.
- Jitter Cam: Used a lot in the sequence involving the riot at and subsequent escape from the orphanage.
- Orphanage of Fear: A terrifying orphanage that apparently is shown just as it was in real life, a brutal facility full of rape and sadism.
- Rape as Drama: Deysi the guard simply hands over Saria to be raped by a man.
- Sadist Teacher: When a teacher says the Catholic Church doesn't think women should be allowed to fight in wars, Saria says "That's bullshit!" The teacher responds by slapping her across the face before dragging her out by the hair and handing her over to Deysi for punishment.
- They Have the Scent!: The orphanage guards use bloodhounds to chase the escapees down.
