“La Civil” offers at Cannes a portrait of violence and resolve in Mexico

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – How far is a mother willing to go to save her daughter? Romanian director Teodora Ana Mihai answers this question in “La civil”, a film in which a Mexican housewife takes revenge into her own hands in search of her little girl, kidnapped by a cartel.

The film was screened in the “Un Certain Regard” section of the Cannes Film Festival, the second most important of the event.

According to the director, the film was inspired by a woman, Miriam Rodríguez, who told her that every morning, when she woke up, “she wanted to kill or die”. That phrase led her to think about the reasons that could lead to such a drastic conclusion and was one of the many testimonies of two and a half years of research.

At first, she thought of making a documentary, but in order not to endanger those who had talked to her or fall into a kind of “censorship or self-censorship”, she transformed that material into a fiction film, which received a standing ovation at its screening on the French Riviera.

It is Mihai’s debut feature and she has had the support of powerful co-producers: the Mexican Michel Franco, the Belgians Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, and the Romanian Cristian Mungiu, all of them also directors.

“I wasn’t interested in telling a story about politicians or drug dealers, or even about the girl who got lost, but about the mother and how she is affected by that big traumatic event,” adds the filmmaker, who moved from Romania to Belgium at the age of eight.

“La civil” speaks of “a deep and bleeding wound, an open wound,” that of the disappeared. It is set in northern Mexico and reflects the helplessness of the relatives.

“It is not pamphleteering, we are not talking about the government, but about the sentimental journey of a mother who is alone in the search for her daughter,” adds Guerrero, for whom being in Cannes “is a dream come true.”

Muhai is Romanian “but feels very Mexican”, according to Ramírez, who recalls that, as the singer Chavela Vargas used to say, Mexicans are born where they are born “by choice”.

The director is confident that this film can contribute to a positive change in the country. The woman she was inspired by, she adds, was murdered in front of her house on May 10, 2017, Mother’s Day in Mexico.

The “Un Certain Regard” section, which opened on the 7th and closes this Friday, has put its focus on novel cinematography and has also screened, among others, “Night of Fire”, by Mexican-Salvadoran Tatiana Huezo.

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