I'm No Longer Here · reception & legacy
2019 · Luis Fernando Frías de la Parra
How I'm No Longer Here has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It slipped out of the 2019 festival circuit quietly, then exploded when Netflix dropped it worldwide in May 2020 — pandemic word-of-mouth, an Oscar shortlist spot, and a near-sweep at the Ariels turned it into one of the defining Mexican films of its era almost overnight.
What's debated
The friendly fight is over its slippery, time-jumping structure — whether the fractured chronology deepens the melancholy or keeps you at arm's length from Ulises.
Its footprint
The film single-handedly put the Cholombiano subculture of Monterrey — the gravity-defying sideburns, the baggy fits, cumbia rebajada slowed to a crawl — back into the global conversation, years after cartel-era stigma had pushed it underground. That image of Ulises dancing became instantly iconic.
Where it stands
A canon climber: a Letterboxd favourite of the Netflix era and an increasingly standard answer to 'best Mexican films of the 2010s', boosted by Cuarón and del Toro publicly championing it.