Summary:
Dragonflies marks the debut feature from Luc Knowles, a filmmaker who began his career in the music video scene before moving into advertising and narrative cinema. The story follows Álex and Cata, two longtime friends whose bond stretches back to a shared childhood. They grow up in a bleak suburban district, a place littered with shuttered storefronts, flickering neon, and the scent of spilled ambitions. The neighborhood is a character of its own, shaping their decisions and offering a backdrop where escape feels possible yet perilous. Both girls have spent their lives dreaming of a way out, clutching a stubborn belief that leaving the present behind will somehow erase the past. Yet time is slipping away. The carefree mischief that once defined them has faded, and the clock is loudly counting down to a moment of reckoning.
Across the margins of their lives move Jota, Rubio, Chino, and Vera, a circle tangled in fragile loyalties and shifting affections. Each person carries a personal history that binds them to the others in ways that promise warmth but deliver turbulence. The film paints a web of loves and losses, promises kept and promises broken, families that seem to have no future to offer. Into this maze steps Vico, an obsessive, corrupt, and ruthless police officer whose authority and menace press on the edges of the story, threatening to push all the threads into a fatal knot. Vico’s presence intensifies the sense that danger is never far away; the city’s shadows seem to close in, tightening around the lives of Álex and Cata.
As the narrative unfolds, the characters accumulate a shared stockpile of danger: a stash of money saved and a cache of drugs that tempt recklessness, along with betrayals that cut deep and leave indelible marks. The line between trust and treachery becomes increasingly fragile, and the friendships that once seemed sturdy begin to fracture under pressure. The women’s determination to escape is tested not only by the external threats they face but also by the internal fractures that time and circumstance have woven into their psyches. The story tracks how these pressures ripple through intimate moments and everyday choices, propelling Álex and Cata toward a reckoning that is as much moral and emotional as it is physical.
What begins as a dream of safe passage—an existence away from the squalor and confusion of their upbringing—morphs into a crisis of flight. The dream shifts as the consequences of their decisions accumulate, turning their fragile flight into something raw and unsettling. The film does not glamorize escape; it scrutinizes its costs and asks what it means to abandon a past that refuses to stay buried. In this light, Dragonflies becomes less a tale of simple rebellion and more a meditation on risk, responsibility, and the fragile hope that a new beginning can ever truly be found within a city that measured their worth by the pace of its streets. The result is a narrative that lingers, inviting audiences to reflect on the limits of freedom and the price of seeking a future when the present is crowded with shadows. The film ultimately offers a stark, candid portrayal of two young women whose quest for autonomy collides with the harsh realities of their environment, leaving them to navigate a turbulent world where escape might be possible in theory, but in practice, the flight is anything but easy. This tension—between longing and consequence, between the urge to run and the need to stay together—drives Dragonflies toward a conclusion that is both devastating and truthful, a testament to the resilience and vulnerability that define the human pursuit of a hopeful horizon in a city that never fully lets go. [Citation: Production notes and interviews with the director and cast provide context for the themes and character dynamics. Attribution to film credits and press materials, with no external links included in this work, is acknowledged.]