Morelos – Mexico Part 2.

Pablo

There are stories you go looking for, and then there are stories that find you, that refuse to let you sleep at night.

Pablo makes cheese. Gets up early, milks the cows, follows the rhythm that’s sustained his family for generations. He farms corn to feed his animals, keeps enough aside for tortillas.

On September 19, 2017, Pablo wasn’t standing on solid ground. He was tied to a tree in the mountains, hands bound, blindfolded. Kidnapped the day before the earthquake.

When the earth began to move, his captors ran. They left him there, alone. He couldn’t see what was happening. He could only feel it. Managed to untie himself.

The army found him and brought him back to Jojutla, to a home that no longer stood, Colonia Zapata, where the central wall had fractured so badly the house was declared a total loss. His family living outside, everything they owned piled together because there was nowhere else to put it.

What do you film when someone has endured that much? No frame can contain that kind of suffering. Preparing for the interview took time, we needed to approach it with the respect Pablo’s story demanded, and we learn a great deal about him by just observing. What we learned was that for him, a small gesture of connection meant more than any aid, more than reconstruction.

Sometimes, as filmmakers, we become the box, the camera itself, recording and bearing witness. The man who goes back to milking cows with a reminder that when everything fell apart, people came together.