Bustamante said the former Minister of International Relations tried to stop the film's production, but 'we were able to finish filming thanks to the ambassadors of France, Mexico, Germany, my French partners, and the Jesuit University who protected us until the end.' Bustamante hired 1,200 locals as extras they are people who are still searching for their missing family members, he said.Īfter Georgina, who is Indigenous, gave birth at a clinic, her daughter was taken away without any explanation. Horror and superhero movies, he said, are ideal vehicles to address a difficult part of the country’s history. This new concept of 'La Llorona' as a vigilante “changes the machista narrative,” Bustamante told NBCNews in a phone interview during the Guadalajara Film Festival. He casts the country as the mother who cries for her missing children, haunting a retired war criminal who is paranoid enough to believe that a wrathful supernatural force is targeting him. In a creative reimagining, acclaimed director Jayro Bustamante tells the story of the genocide against Indigenous Guatemalans in the 1980s by the right-wing military junta. Her spirit then wanders crying in regret. A Latin American folk tale, 'La Llorona' is a grieving mother who is abandoned by her husband and drowns her children in an act of desperation.
