La Zona is a gated community with barbed-wire topped walls surrounded by the slums of Mexico City. The wealthy people who live in La Zona's luxurious homes have their own security guards and an elaborate surveillance system. One night during a storm, the wind blows a billboard through one of the walls creating a chance for three poor kids to enter the community. While robbing a house, one of them kills the woman owner after she discovers them. He and another boy are shot and killed by the armed neighbors who also accidentally kill one of the community's security guards. When Rigoberto (Mario Zaragoza), a city cop arrives to investigate, Daniel (Daniel Giménez Cacho) and other leaders in La Zona have dispatched the bodies and made it look like nothing has happened. But the determined police man, who feels he has been deceived by these wealthy people, decides to uncover the truth no matter what happens.

Daniel and the other leaders call a special community meeting when they learn that one of the thieves is still inside the walls; they vow to avenge their slain neighbor and start hunting for the fugitive. Daniel's teenage son Alejandro (Daniel Tovar) discovers Miguel (Alan Chávez) in the cellar and learns that he is innocent of any crime except robbery. He also realizes that his neighbors and classmates are serious about killing him.

Rodrigo Plá directs this hard-hitting and compelling Mexican film about class warfare, hatred, paranoia and revenge. He has said of the drama:

"La Zona is the story of an armed robbery and a manhunt, but above all, the story of a broken, divided society made up of two worlds that fear and hate each other. What can be done when the inefficiency and corruption of someone whose duty it is to deal out justice leave us unprotected? What can be done in a world where a minority is shamelessly wealthy and the majority desperately poor? What can be done about the terror of a person who isolates himself behind a wall and about the bitter frustration of the person who lives on the other side? La Zona sets out to issue a warning about the shape of things to come, to alert the audience to a way of life that is dawning ever closer."

The top-notch and gripping screenplay by Laura Santullo conveys the tensions that result when separation and paranoia animate people's actions. In this worldview, the stranger is a dangerous person and not to be trusted. Guns rather than understanding are the means to deal with problems. The walls which have been erected to make people feel safe actually imprison them. Dissenters within the community are treated as possible traitors to the solidarity of the group.

Alejandro's eyes are opened as he begins to see the dire consequences of what his father and his neighbors are doing in their pursuit of vigilante justice. The explosive finale of La Zona graphically depicts the shadow dimensions of class warfare as it is playing out around the world as the poor are give the shaft in order to protect the privileges of the rich and the powerful.

Screened at the New Directors/New Films Festival in New York City, April 2008.