A Paris education can't prepare you for your hometown becoming a warzone.
Mexico is in the midst of Revolution when the protagonist returns after studying in Paris to find his native town in Chihuahua occupied by Francisco Villa’s revolutionary forces. He visits his deserted home and remembers people and events from his adolescence that provide glimpses of pre-Revolutionary society under dictatorship: his uncle, the chief of police; his sister’s involvement with a liberal political association; bathing with the girls from a local brothel; a labor strike that ended in a massacre. Returning to the present he discovers that his father has been assassinated and, in the company of his father’s former servant, joins the revolutionary movement.
Cinematography
Desert landscapes that swallow characters whole; ruins as emotional architecture.
Writing
Non-linear memory structure mirrors how trauma refuses chronology.
Acting
Fernando Balzaretti's haunted gaze carries entire political generations.
Director
Gonzalo Martínez Ortega
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of 1970s Mexican cinema's 'Nuevo Cine' movement, using Villa's mythology to examine unresolved revolutionary promises.
Lucha Villa, playing the brothel madam, was a huge ranchera singer—casting her added layers of working-class authenticity and national identity.
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