As with Breaking Walls, the opening film of the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival, Klaudia Reynicke‘s astute, heartfelt Queens is concerned with relationships between somewhat inattentive fathers and their daughters. Also like Borja Cobeaga’s charming road movie, Queens focuses on one family against the backdrop of political upheaval. Here, it’s the diaspora from Peru in the early ’90s due to political violence and hyperinflation, and it’s as much a fascinating snapshot of a period of history that’s little-known here, as it is an engaging family drama.

Carlos (Gonzalo Molina) is either a charming rogue or a hopeless deadbeat depending on which member of his estranged family is asked the question. His former wife Elena (Jimena Lindo) and her two daughters, Lucia (Abril Gjurinovic) and Aurora (Luana Vega) are planning to leave their relatively comfortable home in Lima for a new life in Minnesota. This leaves a small window of opportunity for Carlos to spend time with his children before they leave. However, Peruvian law dictates that the right for Elena and the girls to leave must be co-signed by Carlos. As he reconnects with his daughters, and they begin to raise their own misgivings about the move, his signature becomes less likely.

The estranged father scenario is a common one. Just in the last few years the UK has scene the release of Aftersun and Scrapper. What makes Queens a distinctive proposition is a canny and balanced script, terrific performances, and the political backdrop that provides genuine stakes to the family’s situation.

It’s the performances that catch the eye initially. Both Luana Vega as the elder daughter Aurora, and young Abril Gjurinovic as Lucia are fantastic. The sisters have a real bond that captures the affection and the gentle antagonism between siblings of different ages. Their closeness becomes a site of unintentional fracture as Carlos exerts a chaotic influence. Whether Carlos is a ‘good’ man is debatable; Reynicke and co-writer Diego Vega Vidal give him such a wide array of shaggy dog tales that the truth lies somewhere under a coat of blarney. Yet his one-man attempt to reintroduce the barter system is wildly enjoyable, and Molina brings a similar ludic energy to the role as Lily Franky‘s disreputable patriarch in Koreeda‘s Shoplifters.

The success of the narrative falters a little when the focus shifts away from the perspective of the sisters, specifically Lucia. Jimena Lindo does superbly with a more subtle role as the family lynchpin, but the dramatic elements work best when the relative innocence of Lucia is foregrounded. The macro-economics of her situation aren’t understood beyond the fact that something is causing the genuine upheaval of a move to a new life. So when the wider world comes crashing in, as in a brilliant scene in which the Lucia and Aurora unknowingly breach an aggressively-enforced curfew as they run away in search of Carlos, the effect is intensified.

Deftly written and beautifully performed, Queens is a gem of a family drama that doesn’t come with easy resolution and skilfully navigates varying changes in tone with wit, elegance, and an authentic sense of history. It’s a simple story, but its sense of its family’s dynamics is anything but. It plays with fluctuating sympathies – as much as it’s joyful to watch a father connect with his daughters, it not only complicates the situation, but raises the unanswered question of what has caused the estrangement – and finds real emotional resonance. The occasional lack of narrative focus aside, it rarely puts a foot wrong.

Screened as part of Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival