Ambitious project releases film about life, culture and people of Mexico

A new short documentary about the people of Mexico has been released as part of an ambitious film project that aims to highlight people’s commonalities as human beings, rather than their differences as citizens of separate countries.

Discover Humanity is a worldwide film project that will shine a spotlight on every single country across the globe. The Mexico episode is number 10 of 199.

Project founders Manos Mitikas and Denéa Buckingham said that Discovering Humanity “arose from our shared realization that we harbor blind prejudices for foreign cultures often simply due to a lack of information.”

“Our differences matter, but our humanity matters more,” states the narrator of the short trailer to the series, first released in December 2018. The attitude set the stage for the tone of the documentaries.

The first half of the Mexico episode shows high-quality shots of folk artists, dancers, cooks, musicians and other Mexicans with explanatory narrations and texts about practices unique to the country.

For the second half of the episode, the filmmakers asked several Mexican people, “What message would you like to send to the rest of the world?” and the interviews reveal hope and good intentions for the future and their fellow human beings.

“For your own satisfaction, be considerate, be attentive … and see each other as the brothers and sisters we are,” says a retired woman named Paz.

“Beyond our borders, I think that all of us are still human beings,” says Alma, a teacher, echoing the principal theme of the project.

A few of the interviews were even done in some of the dozens of indigenous languages native to Mexico.

“I take this chance to invite the world … to consider our thoughts and actions so that all people can live well in this world,” says Juan, a woodcarver from Yucatán, in his native Mayan dialect.

There are other interviewees who speak Mayan and one who answers the question in the Mazatec language of northwestern Oaxaca and parts of Puebla and Veracruz. The episode is narrated in Spanish, but English subtitles are available.

The series began with a documentary about Haiti and has so far covered Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Serbia, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Kosovo. All episodes can be found on the Discover Humanity website.

Mexico News Daily