“Mexico 86”: the loneliness of our ideals

After a preview at the Kinolatino festival, “Mexico 86”, the new film by César Diaz, is officially released in Brussels this Wednesday. For his second feature, the Belgian-Guatemalan director pays tribute to his mother, played by a masterful Bérénice Béjo. In “Mexico 86”, Diaz gives us a glimpse into his family history of sacrifice and struggle for ideals.

Mexico City, 1986. The city, still ravaged by the after-effects of the earthquake of '85, is rebuilding as best it can to host the soccer World Cup. It was in this city that Maria, a Guatemalan revolutionary activist, took refuge, having had to flee her country overnight under pressure from the military dictatorship. Ten years after her arrival in Mexico, her son, whom she had left with her mother in Guatemala, comes to live with her.

How can she protect her family while remaining true to her ideals? This is the central question in Diaz's film, which immerses us in both history and his own personal story. Between 1960 and 1996, Guatemala was ruled by a military dictatorship that forced its opponents into imprisonment, death or exile. During this dark period in the Central American country, over 200,000 people were murdered. Opponents of the regime who fled were able to leave their children behind in a system of “beehives” in Cuba, where the children of political opponents of military regimes from all over Latin America took refuge.

Bérénice Béjo's character, like the director's mother, refuses to make this choice and leaves her child in the family circle in Guatemala. It's at the reunion, ten years later, that the activist realizes the consequences of this choice. And this is where César Diaz's film is particularly powerful. This is not a film about dictatorship or resistance. It's a film about the loneliness of our choices and ideals.

From the outset, Maria lives a life over which she ultimately has very little control. She is forced into exile, to leave her son behind, and to follow the orders of the organization to which she belongs. In defense of her convictions, social justice and solidarity, she puts her family's life at risk. Her activism prevents her child from living the life of a child, deprived of photos of his mother and public birthday parties. He is taught to lie in order to survive, to use false identities and to hide from street bullets.

“Mexico 86” is loosely based on the childhood of César Díaz, who had already delved into the theme of the Guatemalan dictatorship in his first film, ‘Nuestras Madres’, which won the Caméra d'or award at Cannes. When he was just three, César Diaz's mother fled to Mexico. He stayed in Guatemala with his grandmother until he met up with this woman, a stranger in the end, at the age of eleven. It is this encounter between these two strangers, between these two worlds, that the film offers us. Lonely characters, bogged down in ideals they can no longer detach themselves from after so many sacrifices already accepted. At once incredible courage and selfishness for their loved ones. A fight for the freedom of the Guatemalan people with far-reaching consequences for the personal lives of its protagonists.

“Mexico 86” opens in cinemas today. On its social networks, Hogar.Brussels is giving away tickets to the screening of your choice.