Mexican-Bolivian director Natalia López Gallardo wins the Silver Bear at the Berlinale 2022

Natalia López Gallardo, a director born in Bolivia and with Mexican nationality, won this Wednesday one of the most important prizes at the Berlinale 2022, the Silver Bear, with her new film

.

The film, written, directed and co-produced by López Gallardo herself, deals with the issue of disappearances and drug violence from the experience of three women: María, Isabel and Roberta.

Isabel, played by Nailea Norvind, is going through a divorce process and settles with her children in a rural area where she discovers that her assistant María, played by Antonia Olivares, is looking for her missing sister.

"It's going to be a year that we look for her," she tells him the latter.

Isabel then offers all her help to find her, and in the difficult process they come across the police commander in the area, Roberta (played by Aída Roa), whose son has been linked to organized crime.

The son, Adán, is played by Juan Daniel García Treviño, known in Mexico as the protagonist of the 2019 film

Isabel will not only encounter the risks of the drug trafficker in her search, but also the endless bureaucracy of the State to demand justice.

According to figures from the National Registry of Disappeared Persons, at least 94,000 people have disappeared in Mexico since 1964.

“More than violence or drug trafficking, the film talks about the fear that can be generated in a society where there is no common project, where people are adrift, where they only want to save their skin and nobody thinks about the common good”, told the director from Berlin to EL PAÍS.

Manto de Gemas

is the director's first feature film but not the first film project in which she has participated.

Her short film

, about two boys abandoned by their mothers, won the award for Best Experimental Short Film at the Morelia Film Festival in 2006. She has also worked with filmmakers Amat Escalante, Lisandro Alonso and her husband, Carlos Reygadas.

She was the editor of

(2007), and an actress in

film by the same filmmaker, in 2018.

Still from the film 'Manto de gemas', by the director Natalia López Gallardo.PIANO DISTRIBUTION

López Gallardo has said that for his film he was inspired by life stories in the Mexican state of Morelos, where he has lived for 13 years.

"I have witnessed the progressive collapse of the social fabric," he explains in a statement.

"I have two children and I imagine, half dreaming, through the fog, the daily life of parents with murdered or missing children, which is enough to bring me the darkest of sadness."

To write the script and

the film, the director says that she met a family that had kidnapped a man from his own home.

The father of the household worked as a taxi driver, the boys continued to attend school, and the family seemed kind and generous to their neighbors.

“They needed more money,” they told her, to justify the kidnapping from her home.

"Mexico is like a God with many faces and the same number of contradictions," says the director.

The López Gallardo award is one more symbol of the international attention that women in Mexican cinema have begun to absorb, and that it is no longer only won by the three musketeers of Mexican cinema (Del Toro, Iñárritu, Cuarón).

Last year two excellent films by Mexican directors were awarded and celebrated by critics that also deal with the issue of violence in Mexico from the life story of female protagonists –

by Tatiana Huezo, and

by Fernanda Valadez.

In addition, three more films by Mexican directors premiered at the Berlinale:

Alejandra Márquez's

, Claudia Sainte-Luce

by Chris Gray.

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