- "La Llorona" (literally "La Pleureuse") killed her children out of love.
- Jaryo Bustamante transformed this murderous ghost into a vigilante attempting to avenge the Mayan Indians massacred by the military government in Guatemala.
- Politics and fantasy go hand in hand in this horrifying tale.
La Llorona revisits the legend of the White Lady who mourns the children she killed to punish the man who betrayed her. The filmmaker Jayro Bustamante transforms this murderer into a vigilante who came to demand accountability for the genocide of the Mayan Indians in Guatemala.
The director of Ixcanul (2015) and Tremblements (2019) was inspired by the true story of the Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt convicted of genocide and war crimes in 2013 then acquitted for a question of formality. "Years of trials have been thrown in the trash in a week by the powers of a few large families and the army," sighs the filmmaker. La Llorona (literally "La Pleureuse") makes the soldier of the film pay for his actions by making him live an intense nightmare in the huge house where he is confined with his family .
Between grief and anger
"The film aims to speak to a population that is totally in negation, who thinks that talking about the past is a waste of time, and that we must move forward," insists Jayro Bustamente in the press kit . The tears of the ghost mingle with the cries of anger and the revolutionary songs of the crowd surrounding the general's home. The incessant noise of the furious people is particularly striking when the executioner's wife and daughter sit by the pool where leaflets with photos of the massacred Indians float.
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Only the culprits hear him cry ... LA LLORONA, the new film by Jayro Bustamante, in theaters in a week.
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Women in turmoil
Besides a mysterious young servant (embodied by the magnetic Maria Mercedes Coroy, the revelation of Ixcanul ), three female characters are bewitched by the Llorona. The general's wife who has turned a blind eye to his most disgusting actions, his daughter who discovers with horror the extent of the paternal monstrosity and his innocent little daughter are carried in spite of themselves in the heart of the story with the old soldier sinking in the madness.
Fantastic and political
Jayro Bustamante continues to reveal the wounds of his country with this tale where the intrusion of the fantastic carries a powerful political message. "In Guatemala, human rights defenders are discriminated against and La Llorona also talks about that," he said. The shivers that this Mourner makes pass in the back of the spectator does not prevent her from feeling empathy for the one who uses her powers to give a voice to a people that we wanted to silence.
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