Every year, the Virginia Film Festival (VAFF) selects two narrative award winners: one chosen by the audience and the other chosen by the fest’s programmers. This year, the VAFF selected first-time director Pierre Saint Martin’s We Shall Not Be Moved, the film that I considered the most significant discovery of the festival.
The film opens with footage of the students protesting against the national government and the Olympics in Mexico City, circa 1968, just on the eve of the city hosting the summer games. On October 2, 1968, just ten days before opening ceremonies, the Mexican military turned their guns on unarmed civilians located in the Tlatelolco area of Mexico City. All told, an estimated 350-500 Mexicans died, and more than 1,000 were injured. The event became known as the Tlatelolco massacre.
Flash forward to the present, and we find a woman named Socorro, a sexagenarian counselor working out of the small apartment she shares with her son (Pedro Hernandez), his wife (the lovely Augustina Quinci), and Socorro’s sister (Gabriela Aguirre), whom she has not spoken to in years despite living under the same roof. We quickly learn that Socorro’s brother was tortured and murdered by the Mexican military during the Tlatelolco massacre. Socorro has been looking for the soldier who murdered her brother for over 50 years, and then one day, the name of the man she believes to be the perpetrator shows up in a document she has sourced.
Thus begins a most unusual revenge thriller, more invested in the harm caused to this fragile family unit by Socorro’s obsession than the revenge itself. It’s a quiet film that rarely leaves this tiny apartment, but the story is full of profound nuance and exceptional execution.
From the film’s first moment, you can feel Saint Martin’s steady and patient hand at the helm. Saint Martin had shot several short films before making We Shall Not Be Moved, but it’s still stunning to think this is his full-length feature debut. There is a level of assurance and confidence on display that many a veteran filmmaker would kill to have. The black and white cinematography is lustrous, the camera moves gracefully, and then there is the performance by Luisa Huertas at the center of the film.
Huertas was in her early seventies when the shooting of We Shall Not Be Moved began. She’s had a long career on film and stage (mostly in her native Mexico), but as producer Victor Leycegui told me, despite being known as “the teacher” in her country by actors such as Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, she had never played a lead in a movie. Not once. Name any great actress in history: Streep, Blanchett, Fonda, Bette Davis, all the way back to Lillian Gish. Any of those I just named would be proud to achieve what Huerta has in this film. It may well be the performance of the year.
As Socorro, Huerta is simultaneously frail and formidable and vanity-free. She is prone to blood pressure-related blackouts, half-heartedly hides her smoking from her son, and relies on hearing aids, which she sometimes takes out when she doesn’t want to listen to anyone else’s prattling. She gets drunk and shares a drink with her favorite pigeon, who she has named after her brother. Socorro is not a healthy woman, but she is also not to be trifled with—as anyone who draws her ire soon learns. She lives at least twenty stories up in a complex with a broken elevator. Her office is that of a hoarder, with files, legal books, and stray papers everywhere. The end cannot be far away for Socorro, but she is still active in the law. Mostly doing favors for friends and perhaps taking on the odd case.
The drudgery of her life immediately changes when the name of the suspect in her brother’s death comes across her desk. Socorro may not be a woman who can move quickly anymore, but her drive is intense and insistent. She will not be denied.
While there are few “big” scenes in the film, the character of Socorro is brilliantly developed, and the cost of her fixation, which leaves her all but alone by the end of the film, is deeply felt. We Shall Not Be Moved deals with Socorro’s attempt at revenge in a riveting fashion. Then, just when you think you know how the film’s climax will play out, the film takes a surprising turn into kindness and forgiveness. The film closes with two aging sisters setting aside their acrimony (if only for a moment), eating burnt toast, surrounded by pigeons and memories.
We Shall Not Be Moved is a stunner of a film. There is no way to prepare yourself for the journey St. Martin and Huertas take you on. I have not seen Sujo, Mexico’s official submission to the Oscars for Best International Feature Film. Sujo must be one hell of a movie because, as my wife said when the film cut to black, “What a perfect movie.”
As usual, she was right, and so were the programmers at the VAFF who honored this beautiful work of cinema.
I screened We Shall Not Be Moved and moderated a post-film discussion with producer Victor Leycegui at the 2024 Virginia Film Festival
