Our Mothers: The BRWC Review

Searching for your past may inform who you are as a person today. However, it’s when you confront where you came from, only to overcome the past, then you might have a shot at some understanding about who you are. And with movies — like Past Lives, Good Will Hunting, Wild, Beautiful Boy, and Slumdog Millionaire — can be a great way to face that pressure, but only if the director has a keen eye for storytelling and empathy.

Although the film is short, it only has a running time of 76 minutes, Our Mothers takes a nuanced look at coming to terms with a nation’s faults and how to overcome your own personal origin story. Written and directed by Cesar Diaz (Territorio liberado, Pourquoi les hommes brûlent-ils?), Our Mothers follows Ernesto, played by Armando Espitia (Heartbeat, My Father’s Mexican Wedding), a forensic anthropologist searching for the remains of his deceased father, who was brutally murdered by military guerrillas in Guatemala during the early ‘80s.

Through his job, he takes a case to search for the missing remains of an elderly woman’s husband, who was also murdered in a very similar way. Ernesto believes this case might shed some light on his own search. But once he travels to this woman’s remote village, he soon learns that the women in this far-off community are also dealing with grief, loss, and a larger mystery for closure.

Our Mothers is deeply subtle, while character moments are what make this film rich and refined. In its short running time, Diaz conveys ideas about family, genocide, and a country’s ugly and bloody history, as well as the after effects of a civil war nearly 40 years later.

In its structure, there are two things going on: Ernesto’s pursuit of his missing father and Guatemala’s past. Both things have resonance with modern-day people, culture, and point-of-view. Oftentimes, Ernesto expresses a distaste for his own country because it’s surrounded by death in nearly every facet of his life — including in his work as a forensic anthropologist and his own mother who appears to be zoned out or removed from reality altogether. If anything, sleepwalking through it, while dealing with grief.

The movie shows all of this with its wide views of action and landscapes, as if the audience is just peering into this world for a brief moment. However, it’s only when the camera moves in closer to the characters when they’re interacting with others, then we really do find the compelling and heartbreaking story of the past. We’re not distant anymore, we’re engaged.

Although the film isn’t violent itself, Our Mothers feels that brutality from the stories these women tell about losing their loved ones and the overall mise-en-scène of the picture. It’s a simple movie, but with a massive scope of history and the human experience — the kindness and the cruelty that come with it.

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