Antígona

Filming for the first time in his native Mexico City, Pedro Gonzáles-Rubio accompanies the theatrical adventure of a group of students performing Sophocles’ Antigone. “It’s up to you to find your own ritual before coming on stage, so that I don’t see you as I do in everyday life!” The filmmaker appropriates the director’s order for his own documentary. How can you film theatre work while also conveying what transcends it – the actors’ intense emotional involvement? At the height of demonstrations that denounced the mass murders of students and clearly exposed governmental corruption, the parallel between ancient and modern-day youth is powerful and skilfully ushered in. The film crosscuts scenes of the rehearsals or play readings and moments of family or romantic life: Brian’s discreet allusion to his father, who has emigrated to the United States, Fernanda’s conversation with her father, who advises her to leave the country, or when she repeats on her bed a key line that epitomises her teenage angst: “Whom shall I implore to further my desire?” In contemporary Mexico, this question sums up the quest of the generation that the film affectionately portrays. A female student asks, “I wonder if we’re in a place where we can be young?” Doubled by the filmic frame, the theatre stage offers itself as the matrix for a space of freedom yet to be built. (Charlotte Garson)