Surviving 37 stab wounds and other dramas of sexist violence in Mexico shake the film festival in Soria

For seven years, films that tell lurid, emotional or motivating stories about women have been featured in Soria.

Director Mariana Rivera traveled there from Mexico City to attend the VII International Gender Documentary Film Festival MujerDOC.

In her suitcase, her short documentary

Flores de la plain

.

A work that addresses the grief that Yecenia goes through after the murder of her cousin Silvia at the hands of her husband.

A true story in which this woman's pain and subsequent act of healing is made with the threads of the weavers of the Suljaa' indigenous community.

“They make memory with the fabric, also of the drama of a feminicide,” Rivera tells this newspaper.

The 40-year-old Mexican filmmaker, who is also an anthropologist, remembers how she learned about Silvia's story.

“I had been researching weaving collectives for ten years because I was one too when I was 20, it was my job while I was at university.

In 2018, I found out that a femicide had been committed in an indigenous village of weaving women in the State of Guerrero (Mexico), the victim was Silvia and she was 28 years old,” she explains.

Upon learning that her husband killed her in front of her children, she was clear that she wanted to tell her case.

To do this, she forged a friendship with these thread workers, who were family and friends of Silvia, thus getting them to agree to participate in the documentary.

“It was a collective decision for them to come out, in the end they were going to tell their own story, of course, without naming the murderer to protect them,” says Rivera.

According to the National Femicide Observatory, more than 3,000 women, girls and adolescents are murdered in Mexico each year, but of that number only around 24% are counted as femicides.

“In a native community like Suljaa', the deaths of women are normalized,” assumes the director.

Flowers of the Plain

is narrated by a voice-over

that

is that of Yecenia, Silvia's cousin, in the ñomndaa language.

“It seems to me to be a question of ethics and narrative congruence.

Nothing better than a story told in your own language,” Rivera justifies.

“Today I returned to the river without you.

Do you remember when we were girls and we came to swim?” the documentary begins.

A phrase that takes on even more value, since ñomndaa means 'word of water'.

Filmmaker Mariana Rivera at the Plaza Mayor Hotel in Soria during this interview on March 16 Rakel Karó

In 2021, Rivera presented the short film in the protagonists' town.

The team arrived announcing the event in style with speakers and a projector to be able to view it.

After seeing it, the huipil (typical tunic) weavers stood up and raised their voices.

“One by one they recounted experiences of sexist violence that they or their acquaintances had suffered,” the filmmaker, who received the festival's CIMA Award, recalled excitedly, accompanied by her producer, Josué Vergara, at the closing gala held on March 16.

The MujerDOC 2024 festival has screened other works that delve into the drama of femicides in Mexico, such as

The survivors forgotten by justice

, directed by Gloria Piña, 29 years old.

It is a 27-minute short film - which can be seen in full on YouTube - that highlights three women who survived the attacks of their partners, who intended to kill them.

“Normally, we know the stories of those who have been murdered, but there are many survivors who remain at risk because their case, by not being judged from a gender perspective, causes their attackers to have sentences much lower than they should,” says the Mexican. , who is also an investigative journalist, in a video call from Mexico City with this newspaper.

The survivors forgotten by justice

give voice to Jayson, Carolina and Yuliana, whose cases were not judged as attempted feminicide, but as intentional injuries or family violence.

“It is understood that they will be cured, although in reality it will leave them with psychological and physical consequences that will have a great impact on their lives,” says Piña.

According to the requests for information that this director made to prosecutors' offices throughout Mexico and which took her a year and a half to investigate, from 2012 to 2020 there were 6,410 convictions for intentional injuries, 5,901 for family violence and only 182 attempts at feminicide.

“The data is important, but the testimonies more so,” justifies Piña.

She assures that it was not an easy job for these three victims to tell their story in front of the camera.

“It was a rapprochement exercise for months with them until we generated a bond of trust in which they felt safe and comfortable,” she says.

Mexican director and investigative journalist Gloria PiñaCourted photo

This filmmaker remembers the days of filming as “very emotional moments.”

“There are very shocking statements, like that of Jayson, who survived the 37 stab wounds that his partner gave him.”

But she insists that despite the fear, “they had a lot of courage and that made them find the strength to speak.”

“They just want justice to be done, their attackers are still on the street,” says Piña.

With these two films, feminicide in Mexico has been very present in the latest edition of MujerDOC, although other works that show the reality of women in different places around the world have also been screened at the Mercado de Soria Cinemas.

For example,

Bye, Bye Tiberias

, by Lina Soualem, shows the difficulty of Palestinian women in becoming whatever they want.

Insumisas

, by Laura Dauden and Miguel Ángel Herrera, reveals the violations of the human rights of Saharawi women in Western Sahara, according to the organizers of the contest.

Or

The Rebellion of the Flowers

, by María Laura Vásquez, which records the tenacity of a group of Argentine indigenous people who have rebelled against the decision of the current Government of Javier Milei that “violates the way of life of the indigenous communities,” they consider.

On Filmin you can see, until the 31st of this month, 22 of the 24 films and short films in the

A competition

section of this festival.

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