Mexican documaker Teresa Camou Guerrero, whose 2017 film Nahui Ollin. Sol de movimiento explored climate change, examines a different social theme in Cruz, playing in the Morelia Film Festival. Cruz Sanchez is the name of the family patriarch, a respected leader of the Rarámuri (Tarahumara) indigenous community. Cruz also means “cross” in Spanish, and it is indeed a heavy cross that Cruz must bear, as he moves his surviving relatives to a deserted part of Chihuahua, where they must find means to survive in an alien environment.
The family had refused to comply with drug lords’ demand that they switch their crop from maize to opium-producing poppies. After their home is destroyed and two sons are murdered, they begin their epic journey as “internally displaced refugees” to a life of uncertainty and misery, always fearful for their lives and livelihood. Worried about also losing their identity, Cruz and his aging mother, the eloquent and brave Doña Chincha, try to maintain their language and rituals and teach their children and grandchildren the values of their native culture. These can be down-to-earth lessons, as illustrated in a charming scene in the family kitchen, where 12-year-old Alondra learns from her grandmother how to make the perfect corn tortilla.
Camou Guerrero captures scenes of extraordinary intimacy, something hard to achieve in documentary films. Her previous work as puppeteer and theater director in the Tarahumara mountains has allowed her to forge relationships of trust that are manifested in the spontaneity of conversations with Cruz and his family, as also evident in her first documentary, Sunú. She moves easily from sweeping vistas of mountains to the contained emotions of personal grief, as three generations of the Sanchez family take turns speaking directly into the camera. The eldest daughter is particularly moving, as she describes a suicide attempt and her father’s comforting words that motivated her to find the strength and commitment to survive.
The flights of fancy are provided by the careful use of sepia ink drawings and animation that delicately convey the pain of irreparable loss and nostalgia for a peaceful past that cannot be recovered. Some images may seem obvious, like those of migrating birds, but they are shot and edited in ways that echo the ink drawings and work beautifully as visual camouflage to the painful recollections that gain stronger impact when spoken off-camera.
Composer Camilla Uboldi’s music enhances these feelings of grief and fierce determination. At other times the film allows ambient sound to take center stage, so that the rustling leaves, the rattles that adorn the dancers’ feet, or a distant rooster evoke the dramatic contrast between life in the mountains and the harsh noises of the city life. Dialog in the Rarámuri language is subtitled, as the family switches effortlessly from their native language to Spanish. Traditional Rarámuri songs punctuate the narrative. Camou and cinematographer Aldo Hernandez keep a respectful distance when characters speak directly to the camera, and the close-ups of dancing feet or weathered hands tell their own story without being intrusive.
The last portion of the film seems excessively drawn out, as we witness an all-night ritual of the pascol dance to ward off the demons that haunt the innocent victims of Mexico’s long drug war. Nevertheless, the film successfully conveys the full impact of the transformation of Mexico into a failed “narco-state” where the ruthless economies of scale that supply the world’s demand for drugs prevail.
Director: Teresa Camou Guerrero
Producers: Teresa Camou Guerrero, Jenny M?gel
Cinematography: Aldo Hernandez
Animation, drawings: Arturo Lopez Pio
Editing: Lucrecia Gutierrez Maupone
Music: Camilla Uboldi and traditional Rarámuri songs
Sound Design: Be Flores
Production companies: IMCINE, FOPROCINE (Mexico)
World sales: Teresa Camou Guerrero, FOPROCINE
Venue: Morelia Film Festival (Mexican documentaries)
In Spanish and Rarámuri
99 minutes
