Coup de Madre: Díaz Revisits Violent Turmoils with Intimate Familial Drama

Director César Díaz continues his cinematic exploration of Guatemala’s brutal civil war, considered the bloodiest Latin American conflict in the Cold War era in his sophomore narrative feature, Mexico 86. As the title suggests, time and place format the specific realities of traumatic histories often conveniently ignored, despite the significant ripple effects which shaped the country and its citizens. Like his 2019 debut Our Mothers (which won the Camera d’or at the Cannes Film Festival), and two previous documentaries specifically grappling with Guatemala’s history, both then and now, Díaz focuses on the emotional impact of such histories with another example of children estranged from their parents thanks to violent, political contexts.…...