10 · 07 · 08

Showing a “Spiral” of women’s stories

Clara Sánchez/Translated by Caroline MacKinnon

[imagen]Actors Iazua Larios, Xochiquetzal Rodríguez, Leonardo Alonso, Noé Hernández, Jorge Pérez Solano, producers Roberto Fiesco and Armando Casas got together on the red carpet for the premiere of Espiral, directed by Jorge Pérez Solano, a Mexican feature film in competition at the festival.

The film tells the story of two women, Diamantina and Araceli, who live in the town of San Pedro Yodoyuxi, Huejuapan, and whose men have left them to cross the border into the United States looking for a better quality of life.

During the press conference that took place before the audience screening, Jorge Pérez said, “I am a migrant, my family is made up of migrants. I was born in the town that you just saw. I was educated surrounded by women. That is why I wanted to make this film there.”

When asked about his interest in exploring a female perspective, the director answered: “fiction is constructed through life, these are the women that I wanted to see, not those who lived in my town. If I has been following real life, Diamantina would have let her daughter get married and Araceli would have taken her husband back.”

Leonardo Alonso said that he felt attracted to being a part of this story, “because I have always had a tie to the earth, to mother earth, to the woman who gives her body to the creation of something unique; she always accepts the fight and never gives up.”

Xochiqutzal, responding to the same question, said “I was born in the neighboring state of Guerrero and came across many similar things in this script to my childhood. My grandmother raised 10 children on her own and kept going with her own willpower. I come from a double matriarch family and see how it is the women who create the father and raise the children while loving and respecting men. Those who have created the spiral we live in are women.”