The strangeness of its title, The Devil Smokes (and Keeps the Burnt Matchsticks in the Same Box), mirrors the strangeness of its Latin American worlds, where the real and the magical intertwine seamlessly. Its cinematic language feels naturally aligned with the region’s creative spirit, without pretension or imitation. Thus, the work of Ernesto Martínez Bucio, winner of the Grand Prize in the Panorama section at the latest Berlinale, stands as something that ultimately belongs to itself.From the very beginning, the film exudes a sense of the uncanny. Five children live in their grandmother’s house, without their parents. One of them fills the missing part of a torn family photograph with his own drawings, blending imagination with the reality of the original image—sketches that quietly reveal the pain of absence. The mother leaves without explanation, and the despairing father sets out to find her. Their grandmother, Romana, haunted by delusions of demons slipping into her home, confines the children within its walls. Cut off from the outside world, they retreat into a dim interior space, easing their loneliness through an imagination nourished by their grandmother’s delusions. From within the house, its doors and windows tightly shut, and through what flickers on the television screen, Mexico of the 1990s emerges, conflicted between its religious fervor as it joyfully welcomes Pope John Paul II and a society gripped by fear of itself. The film’s narrative gently releases stories that intertwine what happens within the family and beyond. Because of their unusual way of life, social services intervene, threatening to take the children away from their grandmother. This awakens in them a desire to remain together, even if it means staying inside their own familial “prison.” The film’s aesthetic language comes through in the strength of its performances and a script that shows how Latin American cinema tells its stories through image, bringing its fragmented and uncanny worlds vividly to life.Kais Kasim