Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #68. David Zonana’s Heroic

Heroic

A sophomore feature that we thought might drop in ’22 will instead break out this month at Sundance. Mexican filmmaker David Zonana who gave us Workforce (world preemed in TIFF’s Platform section in 2019) moves into another system of servants and control in Heroic. Production began in September of ’21 and sees professional actors mixing it up with non-actors. Seeing that this belongs to the larger Michel Franco family — we can expect an acute critical POV on the mental toll that we find in such military college backdrops.

Gist: Luis, an 18-year-old boy with Indigenous roots, enters the Heroic Military College in hopes of ensuring a better future. There, he encounters a rigid and institutionally violent system designed to turn him into a perfect soldier.

Release Date/Prediction: This will receive its world premiere at Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition.