Private Project

M20 Matamoros Ejido 20

Living in between the possibilities that the cartel, the sweatshops and the border allow, a group of men from the slums of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, create a dance that beats the ground, that contradicts and breaks the stereotypes of their context and what is expected of their lives. Between the party and the sacred, these men shape their identities and their ways of relating to each other.

  • LEONOR MALDONADO GARCÍA
    Director
  • TATIANA GRAULLERA
    Producer
    THE CHAMBERMAID, A WILD STREAM, TÓTEM
  • RODRIGO DE LA TORRE
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 27 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    April 30, 2023
  • Country of Origin:
    Mexico
  • Country of Filming:
    Mexico
  • Language:
    Spanish
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • FICUNAM
    MEXICO CITY
    Mexico
    June 5, 2023
    National premiere
    Ahora México
Director Biography - LEONOR MALDONADO GARCÍA

Mexican choreographer, dancer and filmmaker, her work questions the politics of the body in relation to its context within the arts and the social realm, and it moves through different media such as the performing arts, film, and text. She holds an MA in Narrative Practices applied to Community Work. Her individual and collective work has been shown in theaters, museums, and galleries in Mexico and abroad.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

My artistic work in dance and choreography has developed through different approaches to the notion of the body as an archive. In this living archive, there are layers of stories, experiences, sensations and emotions that speak of who we are and how we filter the particular reality with which we relate. These bodies/archives as the first instance of access to the world are pierced by the violence of the context: war, capital, patriarchy, racism, classism, etc. Therefore, their decisions are political and have a power of resistance to the violence that affects them.
The Dance of Matamoros is somehow the combination of the archive bodies that shape it and their ways of filtering reality and positioning themselves in front of the world.

The film sees the dance and the collectivity that sustains it as actions of resistance to the gears that oppress them: the maquilas, the army, the cartels and the state border that have systematically considered these bodies as disposable. Personally, I think we have to be able to see the greys of a very complex war context.

My approach to recounting this story is to think of cinema from the point of view of choreography (understanding it as a discipline that can resignify concepts: body, time and space and organize them in different ways in different devices).

The structure of the film is cyclic, as if emulating the rhythm of the drums, constantly returning to see them rehearse in the solar, where they meet every Friday. The cyclical nature of the structure also refers to the ritual of dance in their lives and to the system from which most of them will not be able to escape (between capital and violence), which makes dance even more important, as well as the possibility of freeing themselves from their context through it, even momentarily. Taking each rehearsal as a means of constructing the characters and developing different layers within the connections of dance with their lives, affections, works and context, through the stories of the characters we will understand how the movements of this dance are articulated, the speed of their turns and the force with which they impact the floor is directly related to the intensity with which they live their lives.