A scream against femicide in Mexico

Mexico is suffocating under a wordless horror of gangsterism much of it directed against women, and the government is paralysed by internal corruption and inefficiency. A new film focuses on the silent interior worlds of mothers and family members whose lives have been wrecked but must carry on day to day.

Mexico gave us soap operas and films about bandits; we go to Cancun to sun ourselves and to Yucatan or Mexico City to marvel at Mayan and Aztec cultures.

Brazil has magnificent beaches, and its soap operas (telenovelas) are exported around the world, but nowadays it is known globally for Amazon deforestation and the murders of journalists, so Lula's government is strenuously trying to stop the ecocide. Mexico also has national epidemics of femicide and murders of journalists, but it doesn't have the same global media profile. Natalia Beristain whose new film "Ruido" (Noise) is now available on Netflix believes that this is partly due to the overload of horror - few people want to see more of this news.

Femicides more than doubled since 2015: they reached 968 in 2022, or 1.43 per 100,000. In Brazil it was 1.40.

One of her objectives in making this film was to overcome this anti-horror inoculation by showing instead the interior life of the mother of a disappeared daughter, in struggle and in solitary moments. Julia is played by Natalia's mother, who has been an actor for 50 years, and Natalia says: "If I have a social conscience, it's because of her".

I spoke to Natalia for The Prisma after her film was shown at the Mostra de cinema de America Latina in Lisbon recently.

This interview was first published in Thje Prisma Multicultural Newspaper and can be read in full, with accompanying images here: https://theprisma.co.uk/2024/02/05/a-scream-against-femicide-in-mexico/