★★★½ "Offers a remarkable example of cinema verite, trusting in the power of its images…Highly recommended."—Video Librarian

"Offering a panoply of their ongoing routines and responsibilities, the film shows children, men, and women laboring at various chores and wage earning jobs such as plowing, harvesting, brickmaking, weaving, cooking, herding and feeding animals, gathering firewood, cutting cane, chopping wood, and carrying water. However, the focus is on the children and the perpetual cycle of labor and poverty that they have inherited. The film's director/producer, Eugenio Polgovsky compels the viewer to not only look at their present condition but to also envision their future. He does this by interspersing occasional scenes and close ups of the elderly who have lived this same life in these same places for so long. ...This film is well done and offers a realistic portal into the lives of poor, hardworking families in the Mexican countryside."—Educational Media Reviews Online

"Poetic yet quietly challenging… beautifully shot images."-Janet Smith, The Georgia Straight

"A tough, rewarding glimpse into northern Mexico's hard-scrabble realities… This is awareness-raising documentary cinema at its most urgent and necessary."—The Hollywood Reporter

"Remarkable… a sometimes harrowing but also poetic and thoughtful film."—Screen Daily.com

"The harsh, relentlessly arduous conditions experienced by children toiling in the Mexican countryside are observed with striking vision and cinematic poetry."—Variety

"An impressive depiction of the bleak lives of Mexico's rural population… reminiscent of the early socio-critical works of directors such as Jean Rouch and Fernando Birri."—Berlin International Film Festival