The Guardian of Memory / El guardián de la memoria, the second feature film by Mexican director Marcela Arteaga, is currently playing in virtual cinemas across the U.S. including the Guild Cinema in Albuquerque, Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, the Laemmle theaters in Los Angeles, the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis, the Digital Gym Cinema in San Diego, the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, and the Loft Cinema in Tucson.
Winner of the Ariel Award for Best Documentary, The Guardian of Memory is a strong and lyrical meditation on Mexico’s failed drug wars and their devastating impact on local communities. Fueled by an astonishing cinematography by DP Axel Pedraza, the film had its world premiere in the international competition at the last edition of the Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival in Toronto, and has played in numerous international film festivals including Margaret Mead, Havana, and Cartagena.
In Arteaga’s powerful documentary, dramatic and quiet landscapes from Mexico’s Juarez Valley are juxtaposed with horrifying but intimately-told tales of mass murder. In 2008, the Mexican government sent an army to the rugged border region with the purported goal of fighting the rampant drug trafficking. As locals from Juarez and Chihuahua tearfully recount the stories of their murdered or disappeared children, parents, and siblings, a Texas-based lawyer argues that asylum seekers from the area must be considered victims of a genocide.
As Mexico’s current federal administration, under the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has deployed more armed forces throughout the country and has granted them a constitutional role in domestic security—in clear opposition to his electoral promise of withdrawing the military from the streets, The Guardian of Memory serves as a daring and cinematic testament to a dragging humanitarian crisis with no clear end in sight.
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Watch the trailer:
