"The film 'Las Hijas del Maguey' is my first feature film and I consider myself an 'artivist' because I really like making art but I always have to have an activist and social perspective - and, mainly, the cause of women touches me a lot," the director told the Lusa agency.

For Francisca Siza, 32, the documentary feature film "must also be a social information work" capable of conveying the message through art, "in this case cinema", even if the resources are scarce.

"This documentary had very little funding, but our interest was really to show the struggle of these Mexican women so that more women could join the movement they formed so that they could get more work and establish companies, in a country like Mexico," she explains, emphasizing the human character of the interviewees.

"We drove thousands of kilometers by car, bus and sometimes by plane, in eleven states of Mexico. We slept in tents or on the floor and we thought we wouldn't be able to take it, but when we saw the incredible story of these women - who gave us more than they had - it gave us the strength to continue. To tell this story to the world," recalls Francisca Siza.

The film won the First Documentary Award at the Puerto Aventuras International Film Festival in April, organized by Americans in Mexico, having previously been awarded at the Berlin Kiez Film Festival, in the German capital, and at the Stockholm City Film Festival, in Sweden, among other distinctions.

The production of mezcal, a traditional Mexican drink, was an area "dominated by men, in a society with great macho tendencies", despite some changes that have occurred in recent years.

"The women who were dedicated to the production of mezcal were, as one interviewee said, considered prostitutes because the men said that they should not dedicate themselves to alcoholic beverages," says the director about local society.

"One of the strongest stories is told by Maria Luz Saavedra, vice-president of the Mujeres del Mezcal association, who was the target of two assassination attempts because of her involvement in the plantations," says the filmmaker, emphasizing that in both attacks, the support and protection of the police was almost inexpressive.

Therefore, the film started out as a work about the Mexican women who produce mezcal, "but ended up becoming the story of the struggle for visibility" of women and the human rights of the families of the producers and rural workers.

The Mujeres del Mezcal association is a non-profit women's organization that began 25 years ago with two "highly politicized" producers who began by obtaining the application of the category of denomination of origin for the drink at the parliamentary level in all states of Mexico, so that they could sell the merchandise legally.

Currently, it is an association with more than five hundred women in several states of Mexico, which fights so that they can achieve better forms of income with a view to family well-being. Recently, it started the process of exporting the drink.

"At this moment, women scientists who study the mezcal plant are involved in the entire process, developing biofertilizers that make production more sustainable; there are businesswomen and obviously agricultural workers," she says.

The largest consumption of mezcal is internal but, unlike tequila, the production of mezcal is "artisanal and ancestral", with the United States being the main importer.

As a filmmaker, Francisca Siza says that she used a "classical language" and without great technical artifices, taking advantage of the colors and sounds of the areas portrayed.

The director Francisca Siza studied documentary filmmaking in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and this is her first feature film, for which she had the production of Gautier Heins.

The documentary 'Las Hijas del Maguey' lasts one hour and fifteen minutes and the director expects the film to be distributed in the United States "soon".

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