CASI PARAĺSO

The film is both a trip in time, from the 50s until today, and in space, from Mexico to Germany. Everything begins for Pablo Narezo with a bag full of Super 8 film shot by members of his well-to-do Mexican family. On film, they construct images of a carefree, sheltered life: weddings, trips to Europe or Acapulco – so many images of a supposely ideal life and social class. This material is commented by the protag- onists upon the director’s request, and interwoven with photographs, recordings, letters and with the reality of today’s Mexico, making us navigate back and forth in time. Whether watching his infant daughter grow up in Germany or listening to his elderly relatives in Mexico, Pablo Narezo delivers an off-camera meditation on the now faraway land where he once spent his childhood. These encounters hint at an off-camera reality that turns out to be more unsettling. This remote perspective reveals Mexico as a violent country ruled by a tight interthreading of religious devotion and military power to subterranean, nefarious effects. Where should one live then? As an exile in Europe? Or in a home country that has become alien? Pablo Narezo diffracts his geographic journey into an inner one while sketching a portrait of a family, a class and a period – and of course of a country: today’s Mexico. (NF)