Las Poquianchis

Mexico, the sixties. Three sisters run brothels out in the provinces. They collect girls from the villages; the families are promised domestic work and the girls never come back. The local police and the local politics know about it and protect it. Inside there is hunger, beating and manufactured debt; anyone who falls ill or resists dies and is buried in the yard. The film looks at two things at once: what happened to the women, and the arrangement that made it possible for years. Felipe Cazals directs; a hundred and eight minutes. It comes from a real case: the González Valenzuela sisters were arrested in 1964. Diana Bracho, María Rojo and Pilar Pellicer are in the cast. Cazals made Canoa the same year; both films are about lynching and impunity.