Mexican filmmaker Indira Cato has captured the attention of the cultural world since it was revealed this weekend that she is the daughter "secret" of the late Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez and the Mexican journalist Susana Cato.
Indira, 31, was born after the extramarital relationship that García Márquez had with Susana while they were writing the script "The mirror of two moons" (1990), and has "very good relations" with the family of the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Gabriel Eligio Torres, the writer’s nephew, told EFE this week.
But Indira has forged her own career in Mexico, where she was already known for participating in the script and producing "take my loves" (2014), a documentary about Las Patronas, the group of Mexican women who, since 1995, feed migrants who travel on La Bestia, the train that goes from the Mexican southeast to the United States.
“The biggest challenges we faced making this film was getting support, since it is a first film and getting support outside the Mexican state to make a first film production is very complicated,” he said in an interview at the International Film Festival Documentary from Querétaro in 2015.
A filmmaker with a social outlook
Indira studied Dramatic Literature and Theater at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) with a specialty in Design and Production, according to an invitation from the Ministry of Culture to a workshop that "documentary film producer" delivered in 2020.
He has also written film reviews for the site Butaca Ancha and collaborated on the book "Political cinema in Mexico (1968-2017)", according to Correspondences: cinema and thought, a cultural magazine with the support of UNAM.
She has also collaborated in the Mexican magazine Proceso as the author of the column "pure drama" and on special assignments, such as an interview with former Uruguayan President José Mujica.
The filmmaker also directed the short film in 2018 "How great are you, magazo!", with a script written by her mother in which a magician grants the wish of a young woman who asks "let the bad government fall".
Now, she is working on a documentary about Olimpia Coral, an activist who originated in Mexico the so-called Olimpia Law against digital sexual violence, as revealed in an interview in April 2021 with the YouTube channel R7D/Rentauna7d.
“It deals with very current and very urgent issues, and I think that does help and there is an awareness of that, that feminism is at its best right now, that we women in Mexico are quite fed up, that there are urgent issues of attention of violence”, he commented.
Despite her work as a filmmaker, few interviews have been given by Indira, who has not responded to EFE’s requests so far.
Even so, throughout his career he has highlighted the importance of telling stories of people without privileges and about social problems.
“Our film is a call to hope, we have always wanted to present it that way, we believe that it gives us the strength to see that something can be done and that there are people who are already doing it,” he told the Mexican Film Institute (Imcine) in 2014 on "take my loves".
Susana: art and revolution
Indira has also inherited the artistic talent of her mother, Susana Cato, born in 1960 in Mexico City.
Susan is the author of "Them: The women of ’68" (2019), a book that collects the testimonies of Mexican women involved in the student movement that marked the country 50 years ago.
She is also the author of the biography of the actress "Mary Red. from movie" (2010) and from "Isjir: spoken portrait of an Iraqi migrant" (2020).
Similarly, he has written radio and television programs, short stories and plays, among which the work "The madhouse outside" (2016).
She has been a reporter and film critic for Proceso.
Indira, presumably so named because of García Márquez’s admiration for former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, bears her mother’s surname because it was Susana who "made the decision not to take the surname García Márquez", according to Gabriel Eligio Torres.
García Márquez had two children, Rodrigo and Gonzalo, with his wife, Mercedes Barcha, who also died in Mexico City in August 2020, and according to journalist Gustavo Tatis, the writer’s family and friends kept Indira’s existence secret for years. "out of respect for Mercedes Barcha and loyalty to Gabo".
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