César Díaz
Birth : 1978-09-20, Guatemala City, Guatemala
History
César Díaz (born 20 September 1978) is a Belgian-Guatemalan film director, screenwriter and editor.
Born and raised in Guatemala City, Díaz moved to Belgium in 1998 as a student at the Free University of Brussels. After developing an interest in filmmaking, he enrolled at the La Fémis film school in Paris and studied screenwriting. Since the mid-2000s, Díaz has worked on a number of documentary films, before making his feature-length debut in 2019 with Our Mothers. The film premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where Díaz won the Caméra d'Or.
Our Mothers received the André Cavens Award for Best Film given by the Belgian Film Critics Association (UCC) and was selected as the Belgian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards. It received six nominations at the 10th Magritte Awards, including Best Film and Best Director for Díaz, winning Best First Feature Film.
Screenplay
In 1991, during Guatemala's Civil War, Daniel and his friends just want to have fun. They travel with baseball bats but their goal is not a game, it is a hunt. They tour through the city looking for low-class indigenous people known as breaks. They don't know why they do it, they just know that they are anti-breaks.
Editor
In 1934, Bolivia is at war with Paraguay. Liborio and Ticona and other Bolivian indigenous soldiers are lost in the hell of the Chaco, under the commandment of German Captain Kundt. They're looking for the Paraguayan enemy that they haven't seen for months, and that they will never find. They leave together in a search that will make them realize, progressively, the destiny they have been pushed into and the inevitable condition of a defeated troop. They're walking like shadows, wandering forever in the middle of dust and silence.
Writer
In 1934, Bolivia is at war with Paraguay. Liborio and Ticona and other Bolivian indigenous soldiers are lost in the hell of the Chaco, under the commandment of German Captain Kundt. They're looking for the Paraguayan enemy that they haven't seen for months, and that they will never find. They leave together in a search that will make them realize, progressively, the destiny they have been pushed into and the inevitable condition of a defeated troop. They're walking like shadows, wandering forever in the middle of dust and silence.
Director
Guatemala, 2018. The country is riveted on the trial of the military officers who started the civil war. The victims’ testimonials keep pouring in. Ernesto, a young anthropologist at the Forensic Foundation, identifies people who have gone missing. One day, through an old lady’s story, Ernesto thinks he has found a lead that will allow him to find his father, a guerillero who disappeared during the war.
Writer
Guatemala, 2018. The country is riveted on the trial of the military officers who started the civil war. The victims’ testimonials keep pouring in. Ernesto, a young anthropologist at the Forensic Foundation, identifies people who have gone missing. One day, through an old lady’s story, Ernesto thinks he has found a lead that will allow him to find his father, a guerillero who disappeared during the war.
Editor
When the colourful ice-cream van rides through the deserted streets of the village, there are no children trailing behind it. In Plazuela, a peaceful hamlet lost in a mountainous region of Ecuador, only a handful of old ladies remain, who are all widows. In the gloom of their houses, photos of those who are gone hang on walls: husbands who have passed away a few years earlier, children gone to work in the big cities or abroad, and grandchildren who have grown up far away from them.
Editor
A family man torn between the love for his family, the boundaries of religion and the freedom to choose whom to love.
Producer
An old woman, 92 years old, leaves her big house to visit her daughter, 73, who is settling in a retirement home.
Production Director
An old woman, 92 years old, leaves her big house to visit her daughter, 73, who is settling in a retirement home.
Editor
An old woman, 92 years old, leaves her big house to visit her daughter, 73, who is settling in a retirement home.
Editor
María, a 17-year-old Kaqchikel Maya, lives with her parents on a coffee plantation at the foot of an active volcano. She is set to be married to the farm's foreman. But María longs to discover the world on the other side of the mountain, a place she cannot even imagine. And so she seduces a coffee-harvester who wants to escape to the USA. When this man leaves her behind, María discovers her own world and culture anew.
Director
