Sotomayor’s celebrated debut feature follows a young family on a road trip, of which the final destination remains ambiguous. Told largely from the point of view of ten-year-old Lucia as she observes the world unfolding before her and intuits her parents’ fraying relationship, Thursday Till Sunday avoids over-narrativization by focusing upon those in-between spaces and non-events noticed by the young girl. Aligning the camera with the precocious child, Sotomayor and cinematographer Bárbara Álvarez set much of the film within the family’s aging station wagon, inventing angles to explore the automobile’s interior and different perspectives to the outside world, all the while still retaining the film’s naturalistic tone and feeling. Thursday Till Sunday explores innocence as a way of being in the world and not a judgment, revealing both adults and children to be searching for understanding and affirmative relationships. The evocative landscape that unfolds as the family drives North towards the desert plays an important role in expressing the unstated and, to Lucia, not fully known emotions as they slowly emerge.

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The Carpenter Center hosts a virtual conversation with Dominga Sotomayor and Dennis Lim, Director of Programming of the New York Film Festival and Film at Lincoln Center on April 7 at 7pm.