El General

"“How do we reconcile the contradictions between our personal family memories and our country’s collective memory?” When filmmaker Natalia Almada asks this question, the answer is her latest film, a tour de force of cinematic imagination bristling with beauty, contradiction, and the epic scope of Mexico’s last 100 years of history. Stunningly realized, Almada’s filmic meditation is framed as a search through the memory of her grandmother, whose reminiscences revolve around her father, Plutarco Elías Calles, one of Mexico’s most prominent and controversial presidents. A general during the Mexican Revolution and then president from 1924 to 1928, Calles was known both for his deeds as a revolutionary hero and the brutal tactics he employed...