ABOUT
ORIGINAL TITLE: Exilios
DIRECTOR: Carmen Vidal-Balanzat
PRODUCERS: Yolanda Guasch, Olivia Luengas, Carmen Vidal
Date completed: 2020
Country: Spain, Mexico
Film Category: Documentary
Length of Film: 52 min
SYNOPSIS
After the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (1936), between 20 and 30 thousand people arrived in Mexico; the government gave passports and nationality to all those who requested it, and it was the only country that never recognized the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
Exiles tells the story of three artists who lived and died in Mexico: Julia Giménez-Cacho: mother of six children and housewife who, at the age of 50, decided to reinvent herself and became an artist; Emilio García Riera: historian and film critic, who, with a childhood deeply marked by the war, became a key figure in Mexican cinema; and Elvira Gascón: artist and political activist, who became one of Mexico's leading women muralists, which at the time was only a male thing.
DIRECTOR'S BIO
Winner of ten NY Emmy® Awards and a Student Academy Award® (Oscar), Carmen Vidal is a Spanish-American filmmaker and TV producer. Her work has been exhibited in international film festivals, as well as the United Nations, ARTE TV, PBS, LeMonde.fr, and the MoMA. She works as a TV producer for the show "Nueva York" (CUNY TV), about Latinos in New York. EXILIOS is her second documentary feature, after her film Retrats (Spain/Mexico 2019), co-directed with Yolanda Guasch. Other highlights of her work include the short films El Eclipse, Slate, and 6 a.m.
