Guatemalan filmmaker César Díaz has received the Caméra d’Or Award for best first feature film at the 72n edition of the Cannes Film Festival for Our Mothers / Nuestras madres. Díaz’s film had its world premiere in the 58th edition of the Critics’ Week competition of the French film festival where it was the winner of the SACD (Authors Society) Award.
In 2018 Guatemala is riveted on the trial of the military officers who started the civil war. The victims’ testimonials keep pouring in. Ernesto, a young anthropologist at the Forensic Foundation, identifies people who have gone missing. One day, through an old lady’s story, Ernesto thinks he has found a lead that will allow him to find his father, a guerillero who disappeared during the war.
Díaz becomes the fourth Latin American filmmaker to received the Caméra d’Or prize since it was created in 1978. The three other Latin American winners are Fina Torres for the Venezuelan film Oriana in 1985, Australian-born Michael Rowe for the Mexican film Leap Year / Año Bisiesto in 2010, and more recently Colombian director César Augusto Acevedo for Land and Shade / La tierra y la sombra in 2015.
The 72nd edition of the Cannes Film Festival took place May 14-25 in the French Riviera.
