Cineando: Looking Back, Looking Askew: 1980s Mexico in Las niñas bien, Esto no es Berlín, Museo

For his debut column, new FQ contributing editor Manuel Betancourt examines three recent Mexican films—Las niñas bien (The Good Girls, Alejandra Márquez Abella, 2018), Esto no es Berlín (This Is Not Berlin, Hari Sama, 2019), and Museo (Alonso Ruiz Palacios, 2018)—that trace the changing social and economic forces that fractured Mexico during the 1980s. Focusing on characters and stories that are seldom at the heart of historical chronicles, these narratives anchor revisionist approaches that lead audiences to the margins: to take women's experiences seriously, to find value in queer radical thinking, and to question colonial discourse, all the while pushing back against any kind of monolithic understanding of Mexican state discourse.