Lecciones para una guerra

It is thirty years since the Ixil and K’iche’ peoples headed for the mountains fleeing the atrocities of the Guatemalan army. In the prologue of Lecciones para una guerra, a father has the spot on the pathside where his children were killed dug up. The suspected theft of their remains accentuates the impossible link between a past bustled by flight and a future bent on approaching battle. Juan Manuel Sepúlveda does not speak the language of the people he films and his interpreter only translates post-shoot. And yet, he captures with staggering accuracy the intuition that runs through a community that, to all appearances, is immersed in peaceful occupations. “Something is brewing… We’ll be killing one another”. Such premonitions have made the elders mistrustful, so much so that they are suspicious of the film crew. As the sequences of everyday life unfold, the filmmaker accepts and welcomes their distance instead of fighting it. In doing so, his film opens up a space in which a collective memory that is alien to him can develop. A spark off, like a fire. “I thought I’d never see fire again”, recalls one villager. “During the war it had disappeared.”