Looking at the crisis of feminicidal violence in Mexico (10 crimes a day on average) from within the system in charge of dealing with it and documenting what happens when an “atypical” figure enters that world, is the proposal of ‘La Fiscal’, the Netflix series that premieres this March 26, as explained by its directors in an interview.
Unlike other stories about femicide, which tend to focus on the victims or the perpetrators, this docuseries delves into a less explored terrain: what happens “in the middle”, that is, “the State, the institutions and the people who try to change some things”, said co-director and journalist Paula Mónaco Felipe.
In that world, the series follows for four years (2020-2024) Sayuri Herrera, the first head of the Mexico City Feminicide Prosecutor’s Office, who Monaco described as an “atypical figure”, being “an activist who comes from the social struggle” without an institutional career.
“We thought it was important to document for others to see what happens when someone, a woman, a young woman, a feminist, decides to enter the State with all that this implies (…) within the institution, that they look at you with distrust and that you are an outsider,” she explained.
To achieve this, the series was granted exceptional access to the Feminicide Prosecutor’s Office, said Mónaco, a space that is rarely open to the public.
“I think what is special about this story is that it allows us to look at a world that is generally inaccessible, which is that of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, prosecutors and investigative police,” he said.
Such access not only made it possible to document the work of the prosecutor’s office, but also to open a dialogue with the families of the victims. In three episodes, the series follows four cases of femicide in Mexico City, showing both the investigations and the tensions between institutions and families, she said.
“We go in and document that, but families also come in. Suddenly victims come in, we go out into the street with them,” explained the co-director, pointing out that the series allows us to see “possible dialogues between both worlds,” in a context that she described as “urgent” in the face of feminicidal violence.
“I think this is very urgent throughout the country, in such dark times of feminicidal violence like the one we live in, which is not only the number of 10 women who are murdered every day in this country, it is the way in which women are killed, which is very different from the way in which men are killed. And in this series we take a look at this without morbidity, but looking at it head on, how they kill us,” she said.
‘The Prosecutor’, Netflix series: Perspective of dignity.
This perspective also runs through the way in which the series approaches the victims, from “care, respect and dignity” and not from “morbidity or the exploitation of pain,” said co-director Miguel Tovar.
“The victims are the center of this universe of ‘The Prosecutor’ (…) we cannot approach it from a morbid point of view,” explained Tovar, who stressed that, despite having access to files, videos and evidence, they decided not to show “that horror that has already happened” so as not to re-victimize the families.
This same logic extended to the way the victims were represented and to specific decisions made during the filming, such as including the testimony of a child who witnessed his mother’s femicide without showing her image, only through audio, in order to “respect her right to memory” and her role in the search for justice, added Mónaco.
“Care is also about people’s dignity. How you show them, from the lighting, to the framing, to the moment you are going to choose,” he said.
In this process, she explained, one of the reflections that went through the series was “the need to take care of our death”, that is, how feminicides are investigated, the remains are recovered and the families are accompanied.
Based on this, the team also worked with the families on how to close each case: “We chose a place in the city where they were very happy to appear there,” he explained, referring to the projection of the victims’ faces in those spaces, reported Agencia EFE.
Here you can watch the trailer for Netflix’s ‘The Prosecutor’.
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