Check out this brief mockumentary video about Mexico's corruption and drug-cartel violence.
It was produced to reach each of the presidential candidates in Mexico and it has been both effective and controversial.
After seeing it about ten times and thinking about it for nearly two weeks, I'm struck by the project in several ways:
- First, its creative approach using child actors to represent businessmen, criminals, legislators, taxi drivers, corrupt police and transporters of undocumented workers, workers crossing the border.
- The audio, video, editing and especially the theme song "Una Manana" by singer Jose Jose from the late 60's.
- The choice of boys to represent the majority of the actors made me wonder if it was intentionally done to show who plays most of these parts in real life.
- Finally, the use of girls in the last minute or so is heart-breaking in its accuracy. The posters of young "disappeared" women, the girls fleeing the gunfire in the shoot-out scene between police and cartel members, and most intriguing, the on-camera appearance of a young girl making an appeal to the politicians to stop "politic-as-usual" and get on with the work of bringing Mexico up from the depths to which it has fallen.
