Mexico 86

The story of Juan Gris and Lola Robles, two young people from parallel universes who will find themselves on the way to give rise to a world and a new version of themselves, and who, together with their friends, will pursue their dreams while seeking to discover who they are.

In 1934, Bolivia is at war with Paraguay. Liborio and Ticona and other Bolivian indigenous soldiers are lost in the hell of the Chaco, under the commandment of German Captain Kundt. They're looking for the Paraguayan enemy that they haven't seen for months, and that they will never find. They leave together in a search that will make them realize, progressively, the destiny they have been pushed into and the inevitable condition of a defeated troop. They're walking like shadows, wandering forever in the middle of dust and silence.

María, a 17-year-old Kaqchikel Maya, lives with her parents on a coffee plantation at the foot of an active volcano. She is set to be married to the farm's foreman. But María longs to discover the world on the other side of the mountain, a place she cannot even imagine. And so she seduces a coffee-harvester who wants to escape to the USA. When this man leaves her behind, María discovers her own world and culture anew.

A family man torn between the love for his family, the boundaries of religion and the freedom to choose whom to love.

Guatemala, 2018. The country is riveted on the trial of the military officers who started the civil war. The victims’ testimonials keep pouring in. Ernesto, a young anthropologist at the Forensic Foundation, identifies people who have gone missing. One day, through an old lady’s story, Ernesto thinks he has found a lead that will allow him to find his father, a guerillero who disappeared during the war.

Romero, a 23-year-old Indigenous man who used to drive a three-wheeled mototaxi (TucTuc) in his rural town, flees local gang extortion and migrates to Guatemala City. He finds a job as a security guard at a commercial center, where he falls in love with a trans woman who runs a local business. Together, they build an emotional sanctuary, but their bond is quickly threatened by the deep-seated prejudice and hostility of his coworkers.

In 1991, during Guatemala's Civil War, Daniel and his friends just want to have fun. They travel with baseball bats but their goal is not a game, it is a hunt. They tour through the city looking for low-class indigenous people known as breaks. They don't know why they do it, they just know that they are anti-breaks.

When the colourful ice-cream van rides through the deserted streets of the village, there are no children trailing behind it. In Plazuela, a peaceful hamlet lost in a mountainous region of Ecuador, only a handful of old ladies remain, who are all widows. In the gloom of their houses, photos of those who are gone hang on walls: husbands who have passed away a few years earlier, children gone to work in the big cities or abroad, and grandchildren who have grown up far away from them.

On January 31, 1980, in Guatemala, while the civil war between the military dictatorship and the Marxist guerrillas dragged on, 32 representatives of Indian peasant associations came from the four corners of the country and peacefully occupied the Spanish embassy, to claim their rights. None come out alive. All are burned alive by the ruling military junta. Only the ambassador survives.