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"Everything Else"

By Sarah Bons

Filmmaker Natalia Almada’s "Everything Else" chronicles a bureaucrat’s awakening.

Sitting rigidly at her office desk, Doña Flor, a voter registration clerk in Mexico City, rejects the papers of the man sitting across from her, rebuffing his protests with stoic disapproval. “Don’t be angry, sir,” she says. “There are rules that have to be followed.” For Doña Flor, a middle-aged woman who lives alone with her cat, Manuelito, it’s just another monotonous day in an empty life. But soon after we meet the main character of Everything Else, her life changes dramatically when she awakes to the death of Manuelito, her only companion.

That day she goes to work without any...

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