El Lugar Mas Pequeño
Tatiana Huezo Sánchez
Mexico | 2011 | 104 min
Language : Spanish
Subtitles : English, French
In the small village of Cinquera, memories of the civil war in El Salvador are still very much alive; they are part of everyday life here. The inhabitants will never be able to forget the trauma of what they experienced, their heartbreaking memories of slaughtered friends and family and the masses of the dead they found upon returning from exile in the forest. Filmmaker Tatiana Huezo Sánchez has taken a unique, creative approach to tackling the subject, a common theme for documentaries. Her film moves gently between the villagers’ revelations about their life stories and images from their everyday life today, at home with their families or out in the forest. The trees, which offered protection during the war and now provide sustenance in times of peace, are silent witnesses that still bear the scars of history. In The Tiniest Place, the forest comes to represent the act of remembering—it is green, the color of hope, but it is also vast, deep and impenetrable. With its constant back-and-forth between recollections and the present, between death and life, the film weaves a dense tapestry of living memory in El Salvador and provides a masterful and visually imposing view on life after war.
Andrea Wildt
