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How Guatemalan Horror Film 'La Llorona' Used Genre to Examine Genocide

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TheWrap magazine: Director Jayro Bustamante says his Oscar entry was a way to use horror elements to examine issues that viewers don’t want to talk about
A version of this story about “La Llorona” first appeared in the International Film Issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Director Jayro Bustamante’s dark drama “La Llorona,” the Guatemalan entry in this year’s Oscar race, tells the story of a Guatemalan dictator who helped engineer a genocide of native Mayans but returns home after his sentence is overturned on a technicality. Bustamante addresses the political story by using horror elements and using the character of La Llorona, a weeping woman popular in Latin American folklore. Bustamante spoke to TheWrap about his unsettling, slow-burn piece of creepy social commentary, which is available on the streaming service Shudder. Why did you want to make this film and tell it in this way? It was part of a triptych that I’ve been preparing since 2015. I wanted to talk about the big problem of discrimination in my society, but I didn’t know in what way we wanted to approach that topic because people in Guatemala don’t want to talk about genocide. At the same time, I was doing research about what kind of films people are watching, and they are watching for the most part horror films and superhero films. And La Llorona, for us, is a kind of heroine and at the same time she’s coming from the horror elements. And I wanted to be in the house of evil. Normally, all the dictators in Latin America continue saying that they are heroes and that they are not feeling any guilt because they saved us from communism. But I don’t believe that. I really believe that in the night, they feel guilt.

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