Mai Morire
(Mai Morire)

A middle-aged woman returns to the countryside where her family lives. “Here time goes by differently”, she remarks. Mai Morire holds together life and death. The heroine comes back to care for her dying mother and also prepare her 100th birthday party. It was on the reckies for Parque via, his first feature and award-winning entry at the Festival des 3 Continents, that Enrique Rivero met Chayo. She told him about her return to Xochimilco, a town crisscrossed by canals and which he describes as “what Mexico was in pre-Colombian times”. Right from the opening shots, the beauty of the faces and landscapes conveys a mystery that is gradually elucidated through premonitions, dreams and tales, obliquely, in fleeting sequences. This majestic portrait makes no attempt to transcend the trivialities of daily life: an industrially made gelatinous dessert, shoes bought in town, a hair slide… Just as the local native culture absorbs these manufactured objects, the story integrates the dreamlike nature of the old woman’s relationship with the world. Will the sole legacy of this simple countrywoman be carried down by future generations? CG