Georgian film critic Salome Kikaleishvili reflects on Dear Fátima — a devastating Mexican documentary about femicide, grief, and the mothers who refuse to stay silent. Set between the crowded streets of Mexico City and the trauma of a family shattered by violence, the film follows Lorena Gutiérrez as she searches not only for justice for her murdered daughter, but for a way to keep her memory alive in a country where thousands of women disappear or are killed with impunity. Through cinema, protest, and personal testimony, Dear Fátima becomes an act of both mourning and resistance.
“If it weren’t for the crime, there wouldn’t be a better country to live in on Earth,” Jules, our jury guide at the festival, told me.
Mexico had always seemed very far away. Not only geographically, but culturally, and mentally too. I knew about its rich past and its singular artistic identity. I knew that contemporary Mexicans were forced to live under extremely difficult economic conditions, made even more unbearable by heavily armed cartels. Still, nothing could have prepared me for what I encountered once I got there.
The Guadalajara International Film Festival has been running for 41 years now. Founded on the land of the Aztecs and the descendants of the brilliant Maya civilization, I nicknamed it “the little Cannes.” In its scale, extravagance, glamorous red carpet, diverse program, and endless meetings, it stands out as one of the major events on the Latin American festival circuit.
While watching the Mexican films in competition, I found myself almost excitedly searching for the one recurring theme that appeared in all of them—whether it was a comedy, a horror film, or a drama. Where else could you encounter so much death if not in Mexico, a country where the dead are celebrated with holidays, and souvenir shops sell skeletons dressed in colorful gowns? But there were also themes—especially in the documentary section—that repeated from film to film, and watching them, you realized this was the thing Mexicans seemed unable to escape, their unresolved nightmare: femicide and the disappeared.
As I stepped out of Guadalajara Cathedral, I noticed posters taped across the stone benches, covered with portraits of individuals. I walked closer and began reading: “Missing…”, “If you see them anywhere, please call…”, “Last seen…”, “Dark hair…”, “29 years old…”, “58 years old…”, “20 years old…” Women, men, children. According to Amnesty International’s 2025 data, more than 130,000 people are currently missing in Mexico. Their relatives search for them like this—through posters plastered across tourist areas. Some of the notices are five or six years old.
One film, in particular, stayed with me. It was about Fátima and her mother, the tireless Lorena Gutiérrez.
“Dear Fátima, you were killed ten years ago, but it feels as if it happened yesterday. Your father and I have spent ten years searching for justice. We have nothing left to lose. So we decided to create a collective and make a film together. The whole world must hear your story.” This is how the documentary Dear Fátima begins (Querida Fátima, 2026, directed by Lorena Gutiérrez, Rodrigo Reyes, Dawn Valadez, Su Kim, and Jesús “Don Chucho” Quintana). The film’s narrator—and one of its directors—is Fátima’s mother, Lorena.
At the beginning of the film, you see a small group making its way toward Mexico City’s enormous Constitution Square — the Zócalo. Once they arrive, they begin unpacking their bags and setting up tents. There are only three days left until March 8, International Women’s Day. They could not have chosen a more fitting date to protest femicide. Alongside Lorena is Maricruz, another mother whose underage daughter was murdered. The other women in the movement did not dare to come. They are afraid. The women demand a meeting with Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, hoping to get answers as to why these cases remain uninvestigated and why the perpetrators go unpunished. Against a backdrop of protest banners and portraits of murdered girls, Lorena addresses passersby through a megaphone every single day. She speaks about femicide, about the necessity of raising one’s voice, about the culture of impunity. She says that since Fátima’s death, at least 40,000 women have become victims of femicide in Mexico; that according to the United Nations, an average of ten women a day are killed in the country because of their gender — while the state continues to look away. The protests against femicide in the Zócalo are intercut with reconstructions of events that took place eleven years ago.
This is where you learn about the tragedy that struck the Gutiérrez family, as Lorena and her husband Jesús recount what happened. On February 5, 2015, twelve-year-old Fátima was walking home from school when three men approached her on the road. The girl was tortured and murdered. The crime had no motive except one: the victim was a girl. The perpetrators were neighbors of the family. “We believe in justice! We must not burn them, please! Let them go — they have to stand trial,” Lorena recalls shouting as she stopped an enraged crowd from lynching the killers. Eleven years have passed since then. She and Jesús are still waiting for justice.
After the murder, the family was threatened as a form of intimidation. Their house was even sprayed with bullets. At the time, the government offered the Gutiérrez family a chance to leave the country, but they refused, “Because then everyone would forget Fátima.” Still, they were eventually forced to leave the city and relocate to a secret location in northern Mexico. Now, they return to make the film. “We’re coming back: me, your father, and your niece Tamara.” They walk into the dust-covered house. They clean the rooms, throw out the garbage, line old toys across the shelves one by one, place photographs where they can be seen, open the windows so that air can finally enter the suffocating rooms once again.
At times, you listen to the parents’ monologues; at others, you simply watch what unfolds on screen. You see neighbours and family friends standing before the camera, speaking about the fear that settled over their community after Fátima’s death. “You can be killed just because you are a woman — and no one will be punished for it.” “My parents no longer let me go outside alone. We can’t even trust our neighbours anymore.” Desperation runs through their words and their frozen expressions. You realize this is the everyday fear Mexican mothers live with, and that the story of twelve-year-old Fátima Gutiérrez is, in truth, the story of hundreds and thousands of women whose photographs are pasted across the streets of Mexico City and Guadalajara on light poles, monuments, stone benches. The film’s entire narrative feels like one long letter, read aloud by a grieving mother, sometimes with fierce determination, sometimes in a voice cracked by pain. She wants everyone to understand just how unprotected women are in this country. How alone they are. She wants you to see how blind and deaf this country’s justice system can be.
The film has five directors, yet this multiplicity of voices never creates dissonance. The melancholic stillness of past lives is constantly interrupted by the vivid, noisy images of the Zócalo: preparations for the holiday, children wandering through the square holding toys beside their mothers, loud cheerful music that sometimes almost makes you lose focus. Then the film circles back once again to the unbearable details of the tragedy. And after that comes another deep breath: conversations between the mothers in the movement and the people they meet during the protests, gestures of solidarity and compassion that, at least for a moment, become the only source of comfort.
This is the image that stayed with me. It comes near the end of the film.They are still at the Zócalo. International Women’s Day has passed, and the square is being dismantled again, chairs stacked neatly one after another, cleaning crews carefully sweeping the area. The promised meeting with the minister never happened. They did not even make it to the president. “She probably doesn’t have time for this,” they say. A strange emptiness settles over the scene, the kind of silence that follows great expectation and disappointment. Lorena feeds ice cream to her husband with a spoon. “It’s okay, we still had good moments, didn’t we? Remember that girl who came today?” she asks Jesús. “Did you see her eyes? They looked exactly like Fátima’s. And do you know what she told me?” She scoops another spoonful and brings it gently to his mouth again. He obediently leans forward. “She said, ‘I won’t abandon you. I’ll come back.’ And her name was Fátima too, can you imagine?”. Sometimes, precisely when you least expect it, you sense an extraordinary tenderness in these parents petrified by grief. You see care. Affection. The quiet mercy of sparing one another even more pain.
The celebration is over. These days of protest are over too. No one from the state ever came to speak with them. They begin taking down the tents, carefully folding the posters. But the fight continues. Now they will think of something else. Because this is the only thing left to parents who have lost a child in a country this unjust. “I know that because they couldn’t silence me, either they will disappear me, or they will kill me,” Lorena says at the end.
What will happen next, no one knows. Not the filmmakers, and certainly not the audience. I return to the statistics once again. In Mexico, journalists and human rights defenders are among the most vulnerable groups. More often than anyone else, it is people from these professions who disappear — the ones searching for the truth.
At the closing ceremony of the Guadalajara International Film Festival, Laura and Jesús Gutiérrez walked onto the stage three separate times, alongside the film’s team, to receive the Audience Award, Best Director, and Best Mexican Film. Each walk to the stage felt like a small victory. One that, slowly but still, might help bring change.
Otherwise, what would be the point of any of this?
***
“I am Lorena Gutiérrez Rangel, mother of Fátima Varinia Quintana Gutiérrez. Fátima was 12 years and 8 months old. I did not consider myself an activist, but I have come to understand that the struggle my husband and I are carrying out is aimed at trying to prevent femicides and at raising awareness among mothers about femicides that are not made visible or that are often not spoken about by mothers and therefore remain unknown. Many times, the patriarchal system in which mothers and families live does not allow them to speak out because of shame. So, through what we do, we encourage them, and they find the courage to bring these things to light. To say: if she dares to speak out, then I can also go out and say what they did to my daughter, or what is happening in my community, or what the family across the street is going through. That is what I have come to understand. I did not consider myself an activist, but if speaking publicly about Fátima’s case and supporting other women means activism, then yes.”
Excerpt taken from the testimony of Lorena Gutiérrez Rangel, published by the European External Action Service (EEAS).
Salome Kikaleishvili
Edited by José Teodoro
@FIPRESCI2026