Our Mothers (César Díaz, 2019) (Patreon)

Originally a film I stopped watching at the 30-minute mark, I decided to go back to it upon learning that Ela Bittencourt had written about it in the latest Cinema Scope. I haven't read her piece yet, but considering that Ela felt the film was worth her time and attention, I figured I should at least see it through. Although my overall opinion of Our Mothers didn't change a great deal, neither is a film I particularly regret seeing. But this does feel awfully thin for a Camera d'Or winner.

In a way, Our Mothers is the perfect film for the Human Rights Film Festival, in that it is about a very important global topic. Not only does Díaz explore the lasting impact of the genocide in Guatemala; his film is in fact about the forensic archeologists who disinter the the remains of the missing from various mass graves that are discovered around the country. In particular, Our Mothers focuses on Ernesto (Armando Espitia), a young man whose work in this field is inspired by the disappearance of his own father and the hands of the military, and his hope of one day finding him and laying him to rest.

Díaz, as a first-time director, seems to understand that he is making a film about a subject of great significance, but he doesn't really know how to organize a drama around it. In a way, it's almost as though the film is afraid of its own fictionalization, for fear of somehow getting in the way of its own message. So the slender plot involves contrasting reluctance vs. impatience to (literally) dig up the past, and the conflict of Ernesto's personal involvement in his work. There's absolutely nothing surprising in Our Mothers. And yet, while watching the faces of indigenous women who, although playing fictional roles, clearly experienced the terror recounted in the film, it's hard to begrudge Díaz. One understands his desire to use cinema as a tool with which to commit them to the historical record in perpetuity.