Tempestad

The documentary follows two women. Miriam worked at an airport; she was accused of people trafficking, jailed without evidence, and the prison was run by a cartel. Adela works in a circus; her daughter disappeared years ago and no institution looked for her. The two stories run in parallel and never meet. Tatiana Huezo directs. The form is what distinguishes it. The women's accounts exist as voice; their faces are not on screen. The camera travels through Mexico, filming out of bus windows, along the coast, through towns and past people. What is said and what is shown are not joined, and that gap is the film's principal instrument. The subject is the absence of justice. Miriam was jailed to fill a quota; the state needed to produce a culprit and who it was did not matter. The film gives that not as an exception but as a functioning system. Adela's strand carries a different time; the disappearance happened years ago and the search never ends. Huezo works on the border between documentary and fiction and became known as well for her later film Noche de fuego. It screened in the Forum section of the 2016 Berlin film festival and was Mexico's Oscar submission. Who it is for: viewers who follow formally ambitious documentary and the question of violence in Mexico. Who it is not for: the narrative gives no information, the pace is very slow, and the disjunction between sound and image is tiring for some.