State of Affairs

An ordinary lazy morning somewhere in southern Mexico. Several local residents are suddenly arrested, accused of human trafficking, and are taken to a prison at the other end of the country. Officials declare that they have dealt another blow to organised crime. But what if the prisoners are innocent and the criminals are walking free? The parallel stories of two women bring to light the practices of powerful cartels which turn ordinary citizens into wary animals, while the authorities merely look on in silence. One of the witnesses portrayed is Miriam, who was wrongfully convicted and whose 2,000 km journey home from prison is reconstructed in this reflective documentary film; the other is the traumatised Adela, whose daughter was abducted years earlier. In her second feature-length film, Tatiana Huezo focuses once again on the systematic perpetration of injustice and delivers a stifling emotional account of an invisible civil war in which the chief weapon—terror—is paralyzing society.