Article by Alice Ferro

Translated by Giulia Baldo

“Somos malas, podemos ser peores” We are evil, we can be even more evil.

The notes of a trumpet in the silence of a recording room seem to foretell the roar of an earthquake. This is how Dora Garcia’s documentary opens, almost concealing – albeit temporarily – the disruptive force of what it will be its main subject. Music is, indeed, the seed of this work, whose title is the Spanish translation of “Wenn ich mir was wünschen dürfte”, a song by the German composer Friedrich Holländer… if I could desire something. The delicate recording sessions alternate with the intense images of the feminist movement’s fights, which have overwhelmed Mexico City for five years. The disappointment and the unheard suffering of women have been going on for so long that the sadness, the vulnerability derived from abandonment have transformed in shield and sword at the same time. This is what the song communicates, echoing for the entire duration of the film.

Mexico, torn apart by femicides and continuous disappearings, is the centre of a global plague, of a social emergency which has to be narrated as the product of a centuries-old culture and not as the result of few, isolated cases. “Every minute of every week they kidnap our friends, they kill our sisters” sing the women of Mexico City, showing their green handkerchiefs in support of legal abortion or the colourful signs which symbolize, one by one, the rights they claim. The march is irrepressible, it permeates the city and then resolves itself into destruction: the only weapon these women have left in order to be heard. It is through union that the individual vulnerabilities interweave in a defence network which allows women and little girls to reclaim the street, a place so ordinary, and yet almost prohibited to the one who walks alone. And it is precisely to those lonely women that the chants are addressed: “You are not alone”, “If they touch one, we will all answer”, “Yes, I believe you”.