Someone is killing the young women of Juárez, Mexico, and no one seems to care. No one with any power, at least, though this harrowing documentary by Lourdes Portillo might make a difference. The subject alone makes the film important, though Portillo demonstrates a talent for suspense and complex narrative in her juggling of the many elements in this ultimately dismal puzzle. (She should lay off the poetic effects, however; they just detract from the stark outrage, horror, and pathos of the story.)

Over the past dozen years or so some 230 young women — some as young as 12, many students, mothers, or workers, and not just prostitutes, as the authorities would like one to believe — in this rapidly growing border city have disappeared or been found brutally murdered. The crimes parallel the city’s careering growth after the Free Trade Agreement that allowed US corporations to open branches south of the border to exploit the cheap labor. Such as poor local women seeking independence — many of whom became the victims of the perpetrators. And who might those perpetrators be? Portillo’s investigation opens up many disturbing leads: an Egyptian national named Sharif, whom the police seem to have chosen as a scapegoat; a feckless band of renegade bus drivers; drug dealers; the police themselves; a combination of some or all of the above. The real culprit seems to be the deepening divisions between haves and have-nots, those who can despoil the helpless with impunity and their victims. Juárez has been described as "the city of the future," and it’s a future to be feared. In Spanish and English with English subtitles. (74 minutes)