Our mothers: the resilience of survivors of a massacre ****

Ernesto (Armando Espitia) will address all the women who are no longer able to suffer in silence and want to witness the massacres of the civil war.

July 16, 2020

Updated 17 July 2020 to 4h16

Our mothers: the resilience of survivors of a massacre ****

Eric Moreault

The Sun

CRITICISM / César Diaz has taken a variety of paths (writer, editor, documentary filmmaker…) before making his first fiction feature film. And he didn’t miss his shot. Our mothers (Nuestras madres), Camera d’or at Cannes in 2019, is a powerful film and stirring on the resilience of survivors of genocide in Guatemala by promoting a speech intimate and humanistic rather than the load satiric works.

That one is not mistaken there: the tribute of the filmmaker to his people, denouncing the massacres committed by the military. The fact to be implied does not detract from the strike force! And it has the great merit to update a civil war, unknown which, however, has made 200 000 victims and 45 000 people missing in this tiny country in central America.

Ernesto (Armando Espitia), the main protagonist of Our mothers, also, one evening, these awful words: “In this country, you are either crazy, or drunk.” We’re in 2018 and the young anthropologist balance between the two, in a society haunted by the violent past.

Like many people of his age, his father is part of the “missing policies” and Cristina (Emma Dib) broods in silence because, suspects there, his mother is one of those who have suffered torture and rape repeatedly.

He spends most of his time to identify the victims in the local cemetery when Nicolasa (Aurelia Caal) is advanced to its Foundation medico-legal. The day before maya wants it to dig a common grave to dig up his Mateo.

Nos mères: la résilience des survivantes d’un massacre ****

Nicolasa (Aurelia Caal) is that Ernesto dig a common grave to dig up his Mateo

K-MOVIES AMERICA

In a photo that she gave him, Ernesto thinks he recognizes his father’s guerrilla. He goes there to find the remains of it, he discovered rather all the women who are no longer able to suffer in silence and want to testify of what happened…

The realization of Diaz reflects its bias for minimalism. But each plan is carefully studied to maximize its reach. As this way of filming Ernesto in diving when he assembles the bones, restoring therefore their dignity to the victims of the abuses. The deduction, rather than the emotion dummy and highly touted, leaves a footprint more sustainable.

Especially as the film offers a clever mix of reality and fiction. Diaz has transposed his story to better build the characters affected by the disappearance and unable to leave their homeland. He also made a call to the actresses fans to embody these women who just want to recover the bodies of loved ones after all these years — a situation that they have lived or still live…

Although Our mothers to be about a quest for the father, Diaz explores with great sensitivity this mother-son relationship marked by the absence (non-voluntary) of the man of the house, with its unspoken, its suffering, and a love that is unconditional reciprocal obscured by the mourning.

In addition to his Camera d’or, prize awarded to the best first feature film at Cannes, all categories, Our mothers also received the Magritte of the belgian first feature film. Awards fort-deserved for this great film — we still have the chance to discover the cinema.