Screening: Portraits of a Search + Q&A

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Alicia Calderon.

More than 20,000 people disappeared in Mexico during the horrifically violent war on drugs waged by former President Calderon. With each missing person, a family is left behind in a desperate search to get answers from a government that is suspiciously ambivalent.

Putting a human face on the most harrowing of statistics, director Alicia Calderon courageously captures the stories of three mothers – Natividad, Guadalupe, and Margarita – as they search for their children who have gone missing. One mother constantly retraces the last steps of her son, combing empty fields for his body; another travels all the way to Washington, DC, to plead for US intervention; and the last simply tries to forget the emptiness and raise her now-motherless grandson.

In one of the most powerful documentaries about the human casualties of the Mexican narco-wars, these women’s stories are among the many that stand for truth and justice for the 26,000 missing people in Mexico today. With their lives now completely devoted to seeking out the truth, they pursue any avenue possible, in the face of an indifferent government which considers their loved ones to be “collateral casualties” of the drug war.

Directed by: Alicia Calderon
Country: Mexico
Year: 2015
Runtime: 74′