There is a blackout in Mexico City. In the darkness some people are abandoned by God (their conscience) and commit a transgression (murder and infidelity). When the lights come on, conscious of what they have done, they must atone for their sin.

To redeem himself from a great sin, a man dedicates himself to building a church.

Mexico City. 2002, 2006, 2010. A cop. A hostage. A wife. Corruption, violence, vengeance. Three destinies, during 30 days, during three Soccer World Cups. Three ways to fight in order to survive.

During the holidays, Amanda, trapped in adolescence, looks for a way to escape from the annoying family trip. While travelling, she realizes how her relationship with her family is progressively crumbling and her parents marriage is slowly falling apart. She sees it as a punishment, but does not suspect that with the imminent escalation of violence in Mexico this could be their last vacation together.

An incestuous relationship between to siblings after their mother's death, leads one of the characters to feel haunted by guilt. They try to forget their blood ties but they only become more evident and hard to manage.

The imprint of the past is made present by the return of three migrants to a community in the upper Mixteca region of Oaxaca, where the three stories intersect.

Young twins, Imelda and Luis, live a neglected life with their drug dealing mom and jerk-off drug addict older brother. They only have each other to fulfill their desires: she wants to be a nun and he wants to be a girl, neither of which seems possible.

In a mountain town, where corn and poppies grow, the girls wear boyish haircuts and have hiding places underground to escape the threat of being stolen. Ana and her two best friends grow up together, affirming the bonds of their friendship and discovering what it means to be women in a rural town marked by violence. Their mothers train them to flee death, to escape those who turn them into slaves or ghosts. They create their own impenetrable universe, but one day one of the girls doesn’t make it to her hiding place in time.

The story of three brothers arises between dreams, ideals and frustrations in the context of a community rebellion to defend their river from a construction company.

Glasgow-based artist Phil Collins’s film Soy Mi Madre examines the immigrant populations of Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley, a sizable percentage of which hail from northwestern Mexico. The region relies heavily on service and maintenance work provided largely through this population, who often commute to work in Aspen. Loosely inspired by Jean Genet’s The Maids—a seminal example of Theatre of the Absurd that renders surreal the intricate power dynamics that exist between people of divergent socioeconomic groups and exploits the volatility of social identity—Soy Mi Madre portrays the social realities of this region through the melodramatic lens of the telenovela. Reproduced in this volume through a generous selection of stills, the film uses popular Mexican television actors and crew, including Patricia Reyes Spindola, Zaide Silvia Guitérrez, Veronica Langer, and Salvador Parra, as well as members of the transsexual prostitute community of Mexico City.