NEW YORK – It’s too simplistic to refer to “Sorry, Baby” (A24) as a #MeToo movie. Yet the film is topical as well as important and compelling.

There was a time when its main plot point would only have been shared woman-to-woman. That was before daytime TV programs and nighttime dramas brought in light to dissipate shame.

Even today, writer-director Eva Victor’s picture, in which she also stars, is anything but easy viewing. Yet, while the tale it tells is sometimes painful, it’s intimate and droll as well.

This is one woman’s frank account of a sexual assault and of her recovery. It involves harsh satirical portrayals of authority figures, including the police, who fail to help her seek justice. Instead, she has to figure out her own path forward, one awkward step at a time.

Victor plays Agnes, a promising graduate student at a small, rural New England university. The story is laid out in five chapters, each representing a year. But these are not dealt with chronologically. Some shuttling back and forth is needed in order to explain fully her relationships to other characters.

Agnes has a best friend and onetime housemate, Lydie (Naomi Ackie), with whom she shares all her deepest thoughts, while her love of literature and aspirations to become a writer are encouraged by her faculty thesis adviser, Professor Decker (Louis Cancelmi). Decker, it turns out, however, is less a nurturing mentor than a predator.

The attack itself is not seen. Victor shows long shots of Decker’s house, where the incident takes place, over a series of hours, ending with Agnes stumbling out in shock.

She tells Lydie about it in detail while in a tub, going over every confusing moment. Agnes already knows, before the police tell her, that it’s too late for a rape kit. But she’s further crushed to find that the university will do nothing to hold Decker to account, since he resigned the day after committing his crime.

Agnes is not pregnant, and there is no mention of abortion as a possible outcome.

“I can feel in my body that it was really bad,” Agnes says. “But there’s a reason, even if I can’t see it.”

The rest of the movie shows how Agnes, instead of giving way to anger and embitterment, builds her coping skills in the midst of routine activities. These include jury duty, a potential trigger for reviving the trauma.

In another brief scene, Decker is revealed to have preyed on one of Agnes’ classmates as well.

Most impressively, Agnes joins the faculty, moves into Decker’s former office and becomes an instinctively sensitive teacher of difficult fictional texts. Collapsing in anguish is not something she ever considers an option. She moves on courageously, although this is not done by forgetting, but rather by attempting to accumulate wisdom.

The film contains three scenes of implied sexual activity, mature material, including a sexual assault theme, an incidental homosexual relationship and an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, occasional banter and intermittent rough language. The OSV News classification is L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Copyright © 2025 OSV News

 Print

Can you say… Feliz Cumpleaños?

Over the past 25 years, the world has grown to love one of Nickelodeon’s most recognizable characters, Dora Márquez. Whether for her conspicuous bowl cut and pink tee, or her singing anthropomorphic backpack, Dora the Explorer has sparked joy in children for generations.

But what happens when that adventurous girl loses the items that have guided and defined her for so long?

Self-discovery is the end goal of Dora’s latest quest in the new live-action film, “Dora and the Search for Sol Dorado,” which debuted July 2 on Paramount+. The film marks the start of a new journey for a girl who has long existed in the minds of viewers as the adventurous 7-year-old protagonist of the original 2000 animated series “Dora the Explorer” — and later in the short-lived 2014 sequel, “Dora and Friends: Into the City!”

Along with her animal-loving cousin Diego (Jacob Rodriguez) and friends, Dora (Samantha Lorraine) must rediscover who she is while trekking through the treacherous Amazonian jungle in search of Sol Dorado: an ancient treasure that grants one magical wish to whoever locates it. Yet her plans go awry when she finds herself losing one of her most valuable tools.

Although most adults would not rank Dora in the same company as the gritty lead adventurers of “Indiana Jones” or “Tomb Raider,” the film features death-defying scenes that deserve a second look — thanks to the use of real fire and critter-riddled caves in the middle of the Colombian jungle.

Authenticity was key for director Alberto Belli (“The Naughty Nine”), who proposed to studio executives that Dora explore her Andean heritage, including the use of the indigenous language of Quechua, which is spoken by approximately 10 million people in South America.

“This is the first time that we hear Dora speaking Quechua, and we went through great lengths to make sure that the pronunciation was right,” says Belli, who also consulted with Incan culture experts on the Andean kinship principle of “ayllu,” along with the use of “quipu,” a recordkeeping device of knotted cords — both elements which are included in the storyline.

“We’ve seen figures like ‘Indiana Jones’ exploring other cultures, but Dora is the only mainstream [adventurer] exploring her own culture,” says Belli. “And she’s celebrating and interested in the history more than the treasure.”

Dora’s innate curiosity is part of what cultivated her popularity among young children since Nickelodeon launched the series. Who can forget the pip-squeak who broke the fourth wall to reel in preschool audiences with problem-solving questions? Even if its repetitive verbiage drove parents a little mad? (You try saying “Swiper, no swiping!” three times fast!)

But for creators Chris Gifford and Valerie Walsh Valdes, the idea of Dora, as the world has come to love, was not so straightforward. Their early brainstorm sessions, along with Eric Weiner, first sprung up concepts of a little boy bunny who would follow a map toward a final destination — tagging along with him was a red-haired girl named Nina and a pocket-sized mouse named Boots.

Nickelodeon’s executive producer Brown Johnson— creator of the network’s preschool block, Nick Jr. — pitched the idea of the main character being Latina after attending an industry conference that underscored the dearth representation of Latinos in the media. According to the 2000 U.S. census, Latino communities were the nation’s fastest growing ethnic group at the time — and 20% of the kindergarten population across eight states, including California, identified as Latino.

The call for Latino characters was so resounding at the time that it caused some advocacy organizations to launch a weeklong boycott in 1999 to protest the dearth of Latino representation — Latinos made up fewer than 2% of TV characters at that time, despite making up 11% of the population in 1999. “ So we said, okay, how do we do it?” says Gifford.

“One thing that we picked up on very early was using the language in a way to solve problems, almost as a superpower,” says Gifford. “I think that was a huge part of the success of Dora.”

Gifford calls Dora’s use of Spanish a “game changer,” and that certainly seems to be the case — in the show, magical passageways remain locked unless the viewer utters the occasional Spanish phrase or word. At the end of every successful mission, Dora belts out her victorious tune: “We did it, lo hicimos!”

Released on August 14, 2000, the first episode of “Dora the Explorer” moved forward in spite of an English-only movement bubbling up in California politics a few years prior; Proposition 227 passed in 1998 by a large margin, effectively curtailing bilingual education in the state.

(PABLO ARELLANO SPATARO/NICKELODEON/PARAMOUNT+)

“It was not the time that [someone] would think to [make Dora a bilingual character], but of course it was exactly the right time for it to happen,” says Gifford.

The release of “Dora the Explorer” could not be more timely. While political angst pushed against the use of Spanish in the classroom, the country was simultaneously experiencing a “Latin Boom,” a pop culture movement propelled by Hispanic musical acts like Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias, who broke ground in the U.S. mainstream with bilingual hit singles like the famed “Livin’ la Vida Loca” and “Bailamos,” respectively. At the same time, actors like Rosie Perez, Salma Hayek and Jennifer Lopez were also making great strides for Latinas in film.

“There was this awareness [that] the Latino talent we have in this country [was] all coming to the forefront,” said Walsh Valdes. “The zeitgeist was there for us.”

But Dora’s appeal did not entirely hinge on her being a Latina character. In fact, she was designed to be ethnically ambiguous for that reason, suggested Carlos Cortés, professor emeritus in history at UC Riverside, who consulted the creative team. “Let’s let everybody be a part of this,” says Walsh Valdes on the choice to write Dora as pan-Latina.

Instead, the focus of the show remained on the missions; whether it was returning a lost baby penguin to the South Pole, or leading aliens back to their purple planet. In its first year, “Dora the Explorer” averaged 1.1 million viewers ages 2 to 5 and 2 million total viewers, according to Nielsen Co. The original show stretched on for almost two decades before closing out on Aug. 9, 2019.

“We saw such excitement from [little kids feeling] empowered by this girl who can go to a place like the city of lost toys… and little kids who can’t tie their own shoes can feel like they’re helping her,” says Gifford.

The Dora world has also expanded into a tween-coded sequel, “Dora and Friends: Into the City!” and the spin-off “Go, Diego, Go!” — the environmental protection and animal rescue show starring Dora’s cousin Diego. Last year, Dora got a reboot on Nickelodeon’s parent company Paramount+, which was a full circle move for Kathleen Herles, who voiced Dora in the original series.

Now, Herles takes on the motherly role of “Mami” in the 2024 animated series, now available to stream on Paramount+. “Talk about going on another adventure,” says Herles in a video call.

Herles still remembers panicking after her audition back in 1998. Gifford, who was in the room, asked to speak to Herles’ mother, a Peruvian immigrant with slim knowledge of the entertainment biz at the time. “Being Latina, at first I [was] like, ‘Oh my God. She’s going to think I got in trouble,’” says Herles.

The opportunity not only changed the course of Herles’ life financially, but it also opened the door for her to travel the world and reenter the realm of entertainment after a brief career in interior design. Coincidentally, at the time of our call, the 34-year-old voice actor was house hunting in Los Angeles, preparing to move from her native New York City so that she can pursue more career opportunities.

“To me that’s really a testament to [the power of] Dora… because Dora’s an explorer, and she gave me the opportunity to explore,” says Herles.

For 18-year old actress Lorraine, who stars as Dora in “Dora and the Search for Sol Dorado,” this marks her first lead role in any film. She fills big shoes; Isabela Merced, who now stars in HBO’s “The Last of Us,” was cast in the first live-action, standalone 2019 film for the franchise, “Dora and the Lost City of Gold.”

“When it comes to Latino representation, [Dora] was a trailblazer for that,” says Lorraine. “Being able to see a Latina woman in charge and taking the lead? We need more of that to this day.”

The Miami-born actor of Cuban descent, who previously starred in the 2023 Netflix movie “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah,” answers the audio call after having just arrived in New York City, where she entertains the possibility of a Broadway career.

Like many young adults her age, Lorraine grew up enchanted by Dora’s adventures — so much that she admittedly got the same bob haircut. “She’s my role model,” says Lorraine. “Every time we would shoot a scene, I would think to myself, ‘What would little Samantha want to watch?’”

Throughout every Dora series and film, courage is the connective tissue in her story. “Dora and the Search for Sol Dorado” reminds audiences that the true navigational force behind the pint-size girl was always within her.

And with a full rollout of fresh Dora content — including the new third season of the rebooted 2024 series “Dora,” and an hour-long special called “Dora & Diego: Rainforest Rescues” — even 25 years after the Latina explorer first appeared on screen, it’s clear that her legacy is enduring.

“She will always be that girl,” says Lorraine. “[She’s] that girl who yearns for adventure and has that curiosity spark in her, and that thirst for knowledge.”

In Mahde Hasan’s feature debut, “Sand City,” a tight, clipped psychosis of disaffection rips through its atmosphere. There’s a stifling thrust cities exert as Dhaka does in the film. Where’s the release? Mauled by a city’s pummelling of daily routines, how do you inch towards a smidgen of fresh possibility? A faith in transcendence is snipped by the brutal drudgery synonymous with scratching out a life of dignity. How do you endure with grace when battered by daily banality?

“Sand City” spins around two characters. Emma (Victoria Chakma), a woman from an ethnic minority population, exits her office only to discover slurs scrawled on her bike. It happens on a daily basis. The guard claims he hasn’t a clue who’s behind it. Rather, he redirects insinuations at her, implying: why is it that only she is targeted? She must be doing something that attracts a particular kind of image. At work, Emma is mostly disconnected. She’s seen as an outsider, an anomaly.

The other character is Hasan (Mostafa Monwar), who slaves away at a glass plant with a gradually swelling plot of making his own. He collects several materials, including silica sand, and stores them at home. Emma also hauls off sand for her cat litter. Sand binds the two strangers. She feels edged out in most spaces, receding thereby to her own little corner. There’s no comfort she receives or warmth from kindred others. He’s biding his time, rosy-eyed about the big, brilliant future his project’s success can bring him.

Hasan orchestrates the city-space’s discombobulating effects with precision and austerity. Smoggy landscapes accentuate a deep-set sense of doom and collapse. There’s despair and disillusionment, but it’s purposefully muted. The film drives the kind of morass that seems inescapable, binding on all fronts. Dream as you may; turning the tide is futile, crashing past any mild fluttering of the heart.

Hasan is terrifically confident in handling silences. Long wordless stretches dominate much of the film, a sandbox for you to decipher and project what characters may be feeling at any given point. There’s a distance, a chasm in place between Hasan and Emma, though a few interstices come up sometimes. But what’s felt more keenly is people being strung apart, socio-economic vectors firmly in place.

It’s a cold hollowness that creeps up on individuals. They have dreams which they pursue tenderly, secretly. Hope is so delicate it might shatter, should they recklessly share, open up their hearts. Giombini’s sharply sculpted framing prises out the city and its deadening blow. It’s a stark, alienating atmosphere we are slowly dipped into. Hasan has no interest in setting up a conventional structure, with easily discernible narrative beats. Instead, he and Giombini imbue “Sand City” with a moodier drift. The blue glowing nights draping over Emma are as striking as evocations of the netherworld in the wasteyards Hasan scavenges through.

Characters don’t navigate the city as much as they are stuck within fixed routes. It’s a stasis that chews into the fibre of their lives. They don’t know how to find their footing if they take a plunge. Hasan does fling himself out there more demonstratively. However, their emotional, psychological isolation gnaws like an open wound. Amidst a space crunch, individuals are severed from any form of affectionate intimacy. The daily struggle for sustenance might not be the same for all. Some, like Emma, occupy a more privileged status.

But fulfilment remains elusive. People wander, aching for some anchorage that’s also affirming. Emma is waiting for visa issues to get sorted, so she can fly out of the country. Rarely do we witness the characters sharing a meaningful, grounding bond with others. Both Emma and Hasan are hemmed in. The latter is hopeful about his big project. But the city’s ruthlessness soon rams into him. To leap at salvation of some kind is exposed bleakly, rudely as a sorry quest. The promise of a renewed future stays suspended.

Mahde Hasan bends the film into a visually stunning drama. Most of the undercurrents are riven into Oronnok Prithibi’s sound design, which unleash vividly seething sensations in both crucial moments, like a heightened, shocked discovery, and regular, mundane rhythms. “Sand City” splays grimness into a vacuum that nags both its characters. Each yearns and jostles with the city’s grind. How much will they yield to it? They have to perennially deal with the interplay between resignation and resistance.

The latter is most terrifying, but the final choice, they hope, will make a difference. The director stitches in jolting, disquieting revelations, aided by Prithibi’s piercing, bracing sound design. The clang of construction noise, as the city expands unto itself in all its congestion, works as a constant reminder of the larger scale. A sliver of genuine human connection seems out of reach for both the characters. For Emma, it manifests through an uncanny intrusion. With defiant interruptions and daring ellipsis, Mahde Hasan twists “Sand City” into something evasively peculiar, singular, and unforgettable.

Sand City premiered at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2025.

Sand City (2025) Movie Links: IMDb