‘State of Silence’, the new Netflix documentary that highlights violence against journalists in Mexico
The documentary State of Silence, directed by Santiago Maza, explores the murders and forced displacement of journalists in Mexico from the perspective of four protagonists, including the cases of La Jornada correspondents Miroslava Breach and Javier Valdez, among others.
The risks they face in reporting the truth are addressed through personal accounts and the interventions of renowned journalism professionals.
In an interview, Santiago Maza mentions: “State of Silence attempts to fully reflect the reality that the press lives in the country and above all it is a documentary that seeks to separate itself from other similar projects because there is a human closeness with the participating journalists and the cases it presents. Although we touch on violence against reporters, we do not only denounce what happens to them but rather that they continue with their reporting work despite the violence they have faced for so long in exercising their profession.”
Among the film’s protagonists is the reporter from Culiacán, Sinaloa, Marcos Vizcarra, who shared in the conversation with this media: “This documentary opens the conversation to what happens in Mexico and Latin America, and that affects women and men journalists. It addresses many of the situations we live in daily. I think it poses many challenges and exerts pressure in three parts: a reflection on ourselves about what and how we are doing it; second, it presents a challenge to the government at all three levels to see what is happening in Mexico and why it continues to happen, and a third is to civil society, and I give the example of what Javier Valdez said: ‘Good journalism needs a civil society to accompany it’, because normally we write articles, photograph or videotape but, many times, it remains in a like or a retweet, and that was exactly what Javier Valdez mentioned, that we need to be outraged as a civil society to have better media. This film is a great tool and an opportunity to do so.”
State of Silence, a documentary that explores the challenges of press freedom in Mexico from the perspective of four journalists, premieres today, Thursday, October 17th, on Netflix.
With information from La Jornada Maya
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