Presented in association with Ambulante Film Festival
Natalia Almada, 2009, 2010, Documentary, Mexico, United States, 83min, Spanish with English subtitles
Past and present collide as filmmaker Natalia Almada brings to life audio recordings she inherited about her great-grandfather Plutarco Elías Calles, a revolutionary general who became president of Mexico in 1924. In his time, Calles was called “El Bolchevique”,“El Jefe Máximo” (“The Foremost Chief”) and “el Quema-Curas” (“the Priest-Burner”). Today, he is remembered as a dictator who ruled through puppet
presidents until he was exiled in 1936. Using the recordings of Alicia Calles, El General moves between the memories of a daughter grappling with history’s portrait of her father and the weight of his legacy on contemporary Mexico. Time is blurred in this complex and visually arresting portrait of a family and a country living in the shadow of the past.
