El Universal profiles The Red Note podcast, previews forthcoming documentary, feature film

The Mexican national daily newspaper El Universal recently interviewed The Red Note producer Estefania Bonilla Hernandez about the making of the podcast and the production team's forthcoming documentary, Flowers of the Desert: Stories from The Red Note, and the feature film drama, The Red Note.

A complete translation of Estefania's interview with El Universal is posted on this page below the fold.

You can also read the original interview in Spanish on El Universal's website at: Lydia Cacho narra sobre dramas de feminicidio

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Lydia Cacho narrates the dramas behind femicide

The journalist participates in the 10-episode podcast "The Red Note," produced by Estefanía Bonilla

Araceli García / El Universal

“Over the past 25 years, thousands of women have been brutally murdered or disappeared along the border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico,” says the description of the podcast The Red Note. This production by Imperative Entertainment and Blue Guitar portrays the problem of femicide in 10 episodes. "(The objective) was to not focus on the morbid and obscure side of how the events occurred, but what are the very great structural flaws at the social, legal and state level which continue to allow them to keep happening," says producer Estefanía Bonilla.

“We wanted to communicate the historical process of why we have reached this circumstance of feminicide, for that reason it starts in 1990 when the first question of feminicide begins to be registered and from there we jump to the case of the Cotton Field and the various examples of activism that have arisen in the last 25 years.”

The podcast, available on platforms such as Spotify and Apple Podcasts and narrated by Lydia Cacho, was born from the idea of ​​director and screenwriter Craig Whitney, who was originally interested in making a feature film about a mother who suffered the disappearance of her daughter in 2005.

Bonilla explains that the production company that was interested in the project proposed to turn it into an auditory product but the plan to bring it to the big screen continues, first as a documentary called Flowers of the Desert and then as a feature film drama.

"The podcast was made at the same time together with a series of image lifting for a possible documentary in which we are currently finishing, so we are in full production," Estefanía says.

“We will continue with this structure especially what has happened around Ciudad Juárez and what historically for 25 years has been the great pandemic of femicide and violence against women in Mexico."