César Díaz Confronts His History in Mexico 86

Mexican-Belgian director César Díaz addresses the ambivalence of history and the personal influences that feed into his sophomore feature, Mexico 86, showing at the Piazza Grande tonight.

The protagonist of César Díaz’s debut film Our Mothers (2019) was a forensic archaeologist trying to find the truth about his father – who went missing during the Guatemalan Civil War, in the 1980s. Now, with Mexico 86, the Guatemala-born director returns to that same historical period in his war-torn motherland. In this sophomore feature, Maria (Bérénice Béjo), a leftist resistance fighter and a new mother, makes the difficult decision to leave behind her son Marco (Matheo Labbé) when she flees to Mexico. A decade on, the boy, hoping for a better future, wants to see his mother again. Joined by his grandmother and aided by a fake passport, he meets her in Mexico, where she has continued her fight for justice and revolutionary activism, undercover.

In Díaz’s emotion-led work, mothers and fathers are more than just personifications of Guatemala as a troubled homeland. Indeed, the parent-child relationships that have framed his narratives so far embody the struggle to negotiate one’s own past and present, in which the personal, political, and social intersect.  On the surface, Mexico 86 is a fast-paced period crime drama with high narrative stakes: will Maria manage to keep her undercover presence in Mexico? Can she and Marco form the parent-child bond that has been absent for a decade? But, speaking with Díaz reveals the film’s subtler shades: the depth of his care for the characters, his ambivalence about his own relationship to the past.  In our conversation, the filmmaker dug into the personal history behind Mexico 86, screening at the Piazza Grande tonight.

Savina Petkova: After seeing both of your films one after the other, I had the inexplicable feeling that Mexico 86 existed in some shape or form before Our Mothers, which was your debut. Is this the case at all?

César Díaz: Actually, yes! Our Mothers started as my film school graduation project, in 2012. As you can imagine, it took time to develop and finance it. Finally, we got some Belgian money, but it still took a while [to make]. In the meantime, I’d started writing a film with the title Call Me Mary: a story about a Guatemalan immigrant in Brussels who has left her son behind, and then, 10 years later, he comes to Belgium to find her. That was always the core of Mexico 86 for me: two people who are strangers even though they are mother and son, and they must learn to live together. But at that point, all the feedback I was getting for this script was referring to it as a migration story, and I didn’t want to make that. But when one of my producers asked me about the origin of the Call Me Mary story, I told him about how my mother left Guatemala for Mexico and me growing up with my grandmother instead. He said, “Why don't you write that story?”

SP: It seems like that was an invitation to make it personal. How do you approach that personal element of filmmaking?

CD: The thing is, I need a theme, an event, or a character that I really care about. When teaching, I always advise my students to choose a theme or subject that’s close to their hearts, because they will have to live with it for five or 10 years, or more. And if you don't really love it, you will drop it! For me, actually, it’s a way to know the characters better – I have to know those people and how they feel in certain situations. I guess this is how my personal experience has helped in developing my films. Also, I’m lucky to have this mixed identity, being Guatemalan-Mexican-Belgian, that has made it easier [financially] for me to make the kind of films I want to make [through co-productions and EU funding]. We find ourselves living in a time when nationalism is growing and nationalities are growing apart, but one has to understand that cinema is the universal language.

SP: Something that struck me in the film was that Maria and Marco are not really mother and son, in the sense that they don’t see each other that way: she is a fighter in the quest for truth and he is a 10-year-old boy. Given that they’re not bound by their familial relationship, how did you build up a narrative where they repeatedly come closer and then drift apart?

CD: What I saw as a main challenge, narratively speaking, was to avoid turning the boy into a burden. If he ever became one, she’d have given up. Yet, I knew deep down they both had to share that confounding feeling that they belong to one other, without knowing why or how. In terms of narrative though, I believe this story is a coming-of-age for Marco, but of course for Maria, it’s different. Her narrative journey is guided by one objective [revolutionary activism] and has many obstacles – Marco being one of them, too. That’s why his coming of age feels so poignant to me: he comes to understand his mother’s reasons for leaving him. Making a choice not because you don’t love somebody, but because you know they don’t have that kind of space in their life for you, that’s beautiful.

SP: And empowering! Often, and more often in period films, children can be framed as either a liability or an abstract sentiment – “children are the future” – but Mexico 86 goes against the grain. How did you shape the character of Marco as a singular, yet relatable young boy?

CD: At first, everyone who read the script commented on the fact that we don’t follow Marco’s point of view. I think that in the collective imagination, we can relate to these kinds of children characters easily – if we think of The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups, 1959), or the Argentinian film Infancia Clandestina (Clandestine Childhood) from 2011, we’re already used to that as spectators. But for Mexico 86, I knew it wouldn’t necessarily work, because the audience would end up judging Maria, she would look like “a bad mother”, whatever that means, and obscure the complexities of her cause and sacrifice. But when you are following her point of view, you understand the stakes, how big they are, and how strongly she believes in transforming society.

SP: The film is dedicated to your mother – was Maria’s character informed by your own mother’s activism during the Guatemalan Civil War, or conversations you had with her?

CD: Yes, I would always ask my mother and her companions, “Why?” It’s such a difficult and painful fight, especially in the context of your own family, you have to make difficult decisions constantly. But they’d say, “Because we wanted to create a different world for you and your generation.” I think there's something noble there, because you're not thinking of yourself, and you’re aware that a social and political transformation takes time. You might not live to see it, but you can still deliver something better to those who come next. We need people like the character of Maria to change the world. If we sit quietly, and then go to a protest from time to time, it’s not going to happen.

SP: What about the casting process, did any of these considerations come into play when choosing Bérénice Béjo to play Maria and Matheo Labbé for the role of Marco?

CD: I’ve always liked Bérénice’s work, but at first I was looking for a Guatemalan actress. No one that we auditioned was able to achieve that intensity we needed and to take the character of Maria on their shoulders – and then I saw an Argentinian film where Bérénice Béjo spoke Spanish and for the first time I realized she was from there. She left to escape the dictatorship. At that point, I think, I started shaping the character with her in mind, but I wasn’t sure if the idea could go anywhere. Talking to the producers was scary because she’s an Academy Award nominee, but they were supportive and wanted to at least try.

SP: I’m guessing you met her in person and perhaps bonded over personal histories of displacement?

CD: Yes! We met each other in Paris, after she had read the script. We had a strong connection and we didn't talk about the film at all! It was just us talking about our experiences for hours and at the end, I said something like, “But do you really want to make this film?” to which she replied, “Of course I do!” It was a dream come true.

SP: And Matheo? This was his first role.

CD: Yes, and casting for Marco took a long time. At first, we were just holding auditions for kids without any scripts or lines involved, just meeting the children and talking with them, then presenting them with situations and seeing how they responded. Also, we looked at their body language, we were looking at how much they could concentrate and what worked for them. The thing about Matheo – and I found this somehow defining – is that he’s been diabetic from a young age. He’s still a kid, but at the same time, due to his health issues, he has this maturity about him. For the character of Marco, we needed someone who could grow up very quickly and Matheo, in his real life, also had to grow up fast. But in terms of the work on set, we discussed with his parents that it would be better not to give him the full script, so we worked scene by scene: each day he would get the scene for the next day and little by little, he discovered the film in its fullness.

SP: You shot in Guatemala and in Mexico. How did these two experiences differ for you, industrially and personally?

CD: Shooting in Guatemala was like being at home, because we had the same crew as we did for Our Mothers. We were the same people, but it was somewhat different because we knew each other better and we could go deeper in some scenes, or work faster, all of which was amazing. For example, the cinematographer [Virginie Surdej] and I didn’t even have to talk because we had worked together so many times before; we share the same references. But this time, what was beautiful about the shoot was that we were there together, walking the streets, and I could show her where everything from the script had happened, including the massacres. At that point, things became very real for both of us. Sharing that experience was very special to everyone there.

SP: Mexico was another story, right?

CD: As you know, Mexico has a huge film industry. One day we’re 50 people on set in Guatemala, and the next we’re 125 in Mexico. Honestly, it was a shock to me, seeing all those people running around… It’s a different way of working. I’m not judging! I'm just saying that it’s difficult going from a smaller, family-like crew to over 100 people in a day. There was a lot of, “Yes sir, No sir,” and I’d always say, “My name is César, okay? Let’s cut that shit out.” [laughs] I certainly needed some time to adapt. But I’ve got to say, I got to learn about shooting action scenes, which I’d never done before. Luckily, my first assistant director [Pierre Abadie] had done a lot of action shots and knew how to deal with an action set. It was like having a coach in action [laughs] and I really enjoyed that huge learning process.

SP: The story of Mexico 86 begins in 1976, in Guatemala, which is also the period that Our Mothers is kind of about, even though that film is set in the present day. In other words, what figures as a traumatic past rippling throughout your first film becomes the present tense in the new film.

CD: Well, that was the darkest period in Guatemala's recent history, so it was very difficult. But honestly, it’s also an obsession and a fear of mine. I was really frightened throughout that period. I remember the attacks, the police, and how the dictator would appear on TV so often that it started to feel like he was a friend of yours. Equally, I also remember leaving the country. So for me, returning was a way to confront that history. However, as dark and difficult as it was, there's some kind of hope there. Because my parents’ generation, as I said, really believed that they could change history and transform their society.

SP: How did it feel to return to the country you grew up in?

CD: It really felt like going back to my memories. I grew up in Mexico and being on-site certainly helped me remember how it was, then and there. But bear in mind, the version of Mexico City that I remember from the ’80s doesn't exist anymore. Back then it was also an incredible city, but it was still… I don’t know how to explain it, it was human – or at least better at relating humans to one another. For example, when I was going to school at age 10, I traversed the whole city, from north to south, via public transport. It took me 45 minutes and nothing bad ever happened to me. But today, no one will allow a 10-year-old child to do that, and the journey takes two and a half hours. Mexico City has become a gigantic place that is out of control, or at least out of the citizens’ control…

SP: And what about returning to that particular period of time?

CD: To be honest, I think this is the last time I'm going back there, to that time period. It has been very important for me to do so because I believe it’s a fruitful way to confront Latin Americans today, through our own recent history. Period films made today are saying: “You know what? We were there 40, 50 years ago. We shouldn’t be there anymore!” Last week, I saw images of people being arrested in Argentina and they reminded me of a not-so-distant past. That image could have been from the ’80s and it would have looked the same. It’s terrifying, but we have to remember. The reason we're making films is to remind people that this can happen again. We cannot allow it to happen again because we've learned from the past – at least I hope so.