San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chis., The last scenes of the documentary about Pope Francis, which could be shown in July, were filmed in San Cristóbal and included people from indigenous peoples who, in February 2016, had a meeting with the pontiff during his visit to Chiapas, reported Esteban Cadoche, screenwriter and director of the film.
“In San Cristóbal we collected the testimonies of several members of Tsotsil and Tseltal communities in their mother tongue because it seemed to us that it was essential to highlight identity traits, since this is also what has been happening in Chiapas with J’Tatic Samuel Ruiz García and in the church of the world with Pope Francis: to put those who deserve it at the center of the scene, which are the indigenous peoples of Latin America, but in particular of Mexico, who are the central protagonists of much of the history of this country,” he added.
Interviewed at the diocesan curia of San Cristóbal, where Francis spoke with members of indigenous peoples on February 15, 2016 and where the scenes were filmed last Sunday, he said that the documentary, “which we made in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, will be a great tool not only for evangelization in Latin America, but for the fight for the dignity and rights of the peoples” of that region.
He added that “cinema has two great advantages, over, for example, the written essay: unfortunately, books are not read by young people or many adults, and to tell the same thing that we are going to tell in the documentary would require two essays of 500 pages each.”
The second advantage that cinema has, added the Argentinean Cadoche, “is that the essay reaches the intelligence only, while cinema encompasses the intelligence and the heart, that is, reason, but very deeply to the emotion and what perceives the emotion lasts longer and, in addition – and this has nothing to do with the lack of humility – more than 200 million people are going to see it, according to our calculations.”
He also reiterated: “200 million people in Latin America are going to see the documentary because there is only one institution in the world capable of making the film be seen, for example, in towns of 2,000 inhabitants in the Peruvian highlands, in the heart of the Amazon and Tierra del Fuego: the Catholic Church, and we have their support, not only in Argentina and Brazil, where we filmed the president of CELAM (Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council), but also the vice president of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (Ceama), Laura Vicuña Pereira. The Amazon has a territory of 8 million kilometers belonging to nine countries.”
And he added that Laura Vicuña “is punctually wonderful, she is 56 years old, she is an anthropologist, linguist, social psychologist, indigenous, and feminist. It is said that in a conversation with Francis, she asked him if he felt the call, the vocation of the Lord (to be a priest), and when Francis said yes, she asked him if he would have liked to have been told that he could not be a priest because he was a man. We don’t know the answer; it remained a mystery between the two of them, but it didn’t go down badly, because she is the vice president of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon.”
Latin America Unit
Cadoche clarified that the documentary “is not a biography about Francis. Inevitably, we are going to have to resort to moments before his papacy, but basically they are the most outstanding stretches of his office, emphasizing the unity of Latin America, evangelization in the continent where half of the world’s Catholics live, so it is very important for the Catholic Church.”
He recalled that it was Jorge Mario Bergoglio, already as pope, who “gave a definitively central imprint to the option for the poor, saying something that many of us said a long time ago: they are the recipients of Christ’s initial message and must continue to be so.”
In addition, he said, “he connects with two things: the testimony of his humility, almost bordering on asceticism, let’s say, refractory to all luxury and excess of pomp that reminds us of Christ and the fishermen, not only me, but many people.”
He mentioned that to film the scenes in San Cristóbal “people came from different parts of Chiapas (who met with the Pope in 2016), summoned by Father Felipe Ali Modad (who works in the Jesuit mission of Bachajón, municipality of Chilón), very loved for being the man who in some way replicates the message and action of Pope Francis,” he assured.
Esteban reported that the film “is financed with enormous effort and sacrifice because the contributions are less and slower than one expects, but here we are finishing the shooting, which means that there are no impossible things when one has the will and perseverance to pursue them. The world premiere would be the month after the end of the World Cup, probably in July.”
Finally, he took the opportunity to thank the Pan American Committee of Judges for Social Rights, whose Mexico chapter is chaired by Rebeca Xicohténcatl, as well as the government of Chiapas, “that made possible the assistance of equipment and professional personnel.”
Source: La Jornada
