Don Reynaldo’s kingdom is about to disappear. The old hunter, protagonist of a new Mexican film titled The North over the void, He owns a huge ranch in the north of the country, in the state of Nuevo León, which he inherited from his father and would like to leave in the hands of his son. But Don Reynaldo has several problems. On the one hand, his son is much more urban than rural, he has little interest in moving to the ranch, and his father does not seem interested in leaving the place in charge of his two daughters. In addition, his employees fear that the heirs would not take care of the territory as they do. But more serious, Don Reynaldo is being extorted by a group of drug traffickers in the area and refuses to pay them a fee. But although the fear of weapons is latent, north over the void It is not just another film about bullets and drug lords. It is rather a feminist film where the protagonist is the masculinity of Don Reynaldo, this one who is firm as iron in front of his friends but is afraid of breaking at any moment. “What good is it for a man to dominate the whole world if he loses himself?” His children sing, like an omen, at the table at one point in the film. north over the void It is not the end of the patriarchy, but perhaps it is about the fear of the patriarch.
“I wanted to talk about masculinity in relation to violence, but not just ‘big’ violence, the one that always captures the headlines of the newspapers,” says the film’s director, Alejandra Márquez Abella (San Luis Potosí, 39 years). More than bringing shootings, the film questions gender education, the one that “many times, well, costs them their lives” for men. The film is inspired by a true story, that of the rachero Alejo Garza Tamez, an old hunter who confronted the Los Zetas cartel when they tried to take over his land in Tamaulipas. He died in 2010, in a confrontation against drug traffickers.
north over the void premieres for the first time at the Berlin Film Festival, an event that kicked off this week choosing this and three other films directed by Mexican women (Natalia López Gallardo’s mantle of gems, God’s kingdom by Claudia Sainte-Luce, and Soul and Peace by Chris Gray). Last year, the cinema of Mexican directors was also awarded and positively reviewed around the world, with films such as Fire night by Tatiana Huezo or No Particular Signs by Fernanda Valdez. The work of directors is not new in Mexico, insist the new winners, but it is receiving international recognition that is normally only absorbed by the three musketeers (Cuarón, Iñárritu, Del Toro). EL PAÍS interviewed Márquez to talk about the role of female directors and his new film about the masculinity of Don Reynaldo.
Ask. Recently, three Mexican directors –Fernanda Valadez, Tatiana Huezo, Natalia Almada– they talked to New York Times how difficult it has been to find women in film schools or to be respected as directors. Has your case been similar?
Answer. Yes, without a doubt, and I prefer to say that the discrimination experienced by female directors is also thematic: I feel that it is very difficult to promote, finance, produce and finish projects that speak about the experience of women. I think that this is specifically understood in the world of cinema, in terms of the people who make financing or programming decisions. These types of films will always be relegated, they will be minor, less important. As there are issues and there are situations that are worthwhile and there are others that seem not. And for me that has always been the problem. Of course, the lack of references tells you about that.
P. But the feminist movements in Mexico and in the world have not generated changes in that sense?
R. I think so, but I couldn’t say what. I feel that it is changing because we are more and more [directoras]. I think there is also a different perception in film schools, or in cinema spaces, in the productions themselves. The stories and experience of women are perhaps a little more accepted. But it seems to me that there has not been such a radical and definitive change yet. There it goes.
P. In the last 21 years, after the premiere of Loves Dogs in 2000 and the recognition of the three famous Mexican directors in the following years, did those successes open new doors for female directors? Or has it rather been a parallel effort?
R. I think it has been a parallel effort by women. I think that they, and that film in particular, opened the door to other things, to other situations that occurred later in the new Mexican cinema. But I feel that no, that the work of women has been enough of them. The filmmakers before us have opened doors for us, who have been few but very forceful. María Novaro is one of them, for example. It is not that this has started with us, it is a work of many years, much more than 21 years I would say, and of many women who perhaps could not be directors, could not be photographers, because they were told that they had to be producers or that they had to be writers. They were told that they couldn’t do what they wanted to do. Over the years I have come across women who suddenly come to us and tell us ‘well, but you are not the only ones or the first’. And I say ‘of course, they are absolutely right’. The least that should happen is that we fall into a second round of invisibility of them, and their work, and everything they did, and all the doors they opened for us.
P. Do you consider yourself a feminist?
A: I consider myself a feminist fullYes.
Q: Is there something in the technique of filmmaking that changes with a feminist consciousness?
A: Without a doubt, I think that just what they call female gaze, or the female gaze. The female gaze sounds like something formulaic and reproducible. And actually for me it’s just to broaden a little bit the spectrum of vision that we’re having for the experiences that happen in the world. It is true that since the most classic cinema we had been replicating, men and women, the male gaze on any subject. So it kind of scares me now to pigeonhole the female gaze. To make a feminist film you shouldn’t have to go through a list of popcorn, or situations, such as saying ‘ah, the protagonist is a woman’, or ‘ah, the subject is feminist’, or ‘ah, it’s a biopic about a feminist. Well no, it’s much deeper. And I deeply think that this is super linked to the technique, and to the cinematographic language, and to the search you make in each film. It is not a formula. You can’t buy the feminist package to apply the rules to anything. I feel that within the narration of the film you are making, those codes are hidden that you have to find and that you have to know how to handle well to talk about the experience of this woman or this man. But it can be done in a different way that doesn’t reinforce the gender stereotypes that we’ve been dealing with. I always say that sometimes you have to know how to film the lack of power of a woman instead of wanting to empower them all for the sake of it. There is something of agency in recognizing and knowing how to look at someone’s lack of power in life.
P. What was the seed of your new film? Why did you choose to talk about these ranchers in the north of the country?
R. This came because [la productora] Bengal, who are Gabriel Nunzio and Diego Osorno, had a script written by Gabriel, a script that told an anecdote that was inspired by what happened in Tamaulipas 10 years ago more or less. It is a story that is a little like that of the protagonist of my film. When I read it, it seemed to me like the typical western or Mexican Revolution story that we have heard millions of times, and it seemed interesting to imagine the exercise of what would happen if I put myself there, to think from there. I found it interesting to try to reconfigure a story that has always been told from the appreciation of values such as heroism and bravery. And say well, ‘but what is heroism? What is bravery? Since when did we learn that these are virtues and that they are virtues of men?’ I ended up rewriting the script with Gabriel.
P. His previous movie girls well (2018), it was about high society in Mexico City and what happens when they lose their wealth. Is this new film also about elites and their loss of status, but in the north?
R. Yes, there is a latent issue about social classes, which also do not even work the same here and there. Classism and race, for example, work differently in the North than elsewhere.
But those from the north are not so elite, in this [película] we are playing that there is a difference between them and the people who work the ranch that belongs to them. This game of and whose is the earth? Who does he work for? Or from whom did you buy it or inherit it? I feel like it’s a movie that begins, perhaps, making a comment about the elite and the class, race, the relationships between workers and bosses. But it is also going to question anthropocentrism, and colonialism, and it becomes a broader thing where nothing matters, because we are all going to leave this earth at some point. This movie is more existential in that sense.
P. What if girls well had a more feminine focus this seems to be more about the masculinity of the protagonist, Don Reynaldo.
A: I wanted to talk about masculinity in relation to violence, but not just the ‘big’ violence and the one that always captures the headlines of the newspapers, which is the most brutal and the most important. But how is that related to the education that boys receive to instill these feelings in them: you have to be brave, you have to be heroic. Masculinity understood from that place that many times, well, costs them their lives. It becomes like a self-established prophecy. It seems to me that, that masculinity, education and the cultural world of men – which is also obviously patriarchy and capitalism in broad strokes – and how even the violent way we feed ourselves today is part of that .
P. Just the animals are also protagonists, as witnesses or as those sacrificed to eat. The film focuses on frogs, kids, tarantulas… What is the metaphor?
P. Well, we laughed with Claudia Becerril, who is the photographer, because we said that this is already the animal gaze [la mirada animal], that this should be more open to include the experience of other living beings, that we are not just humans. Because precisely the film asks this question of ‘who owns the land?’, ‘Who owns the land?’ And this said a little in two senses: the land as that little piece of land that belongs to Don Reynaldo, or his father who inherited it; or it is the one who wants to steal it from; or it is the workers who nurture it and work it; or is it one of those, the animals that inhabit it today. It seemed to us a very relevant question in these times, because we are treating the planet as if it were the private property of human beings.
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