MISS BALA—–directed & co-written by Gerardo Naranjo, this relentless, unsettling 2011 Mexican drama is fiction but it’s based on incidents that ensnared a real-life beauty contestant. ‘Laura’ (Stephanie Sigman) innocently enters the Miss Baja contest where she accidentally witnesses some gang activity.  Kidnapped by the narcos, bewildered and terrified, and with her family as bargaining chips, she is used by the gang for money-swaps and to expose a DEA agent.

Uncompromising  nail-biter with fine acting from Sigman and chief nemesis Noe Hernandez. Not a happy 113 minutes, but a compelling pry into the anguish of an entire trapped society, conveyed through one lonely young lady. With Miguel Couturier, James Russo, Irene Azuela.  The drug tragedy, a wholly manufactured catastrophe of historic dimensions, rolls on…