Violence, affections, sodororidade in Prayers for the stolen, by Tatiana Huezo

Abstract

This article aims at presenting a reading, among many possible ones, of the Mexican movie production Prayers for the Stolen (Noche de fuego, 2021), directed by Tatiana Huezo. Our intention is to reflect upon the extreme violence to which the girl and woman characters are subjected, more specifically: the inaction of the Nation-state, which does not fight organized crime which is responsible for kidnaps, rapes and murders of such female characters; the corruption and involvement of police forces with drug trafficking schemes; the unprotected situation and absolute abandonment in which these women live in a small Mexican countryside village. The purpose, then, is to think about the two major aspects related to the engendering of continuous violence against these bodies. There is, on the one hand, the way the women from the village try, yet tentatively, in a sisterhood gesture among them, to preserve the lives of the girls and young women. On the other hand, we are going to analyze the other face of violence: the worst of them, the one which brings into perspective the systemic and objective violence, many times translated as the erasure, the passivity, of the women characters in question. To consider the filmic production, we are going to resort to the critical-theoretical positions of Judith Butler, Vilma Piedade, Julieta Paredes, Slavoj Žižek, among others.