SILENT BEAUTY
SILENT BEAUTY
SILENT BEAUTY
SILENT BEAUTY
A lyrical and sensitive autobiographical exploration of the filmmaker’s family history with child sexual abuse and a culture of silence

SILENT BEAUTY

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BEST FEATURE DOC - Urbanworld Film Festival | BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY - New Orleans Film Festival

Healing from Child Sexual Abuse • Generational Family Trauma • Women & Mental Health 

Date of Completion: 2022 | Run Time: 87 minutes​​ | Language: English and some Spanish with English subtitles | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript | Director: Jasmín Mara LópezProducer: Jasmín Mara López Editor: Sarah Garrahan | Director of PhotographyBron Moyi

When director Jasmin Mara López sees a photo of her niece with her grandfather, she is flooded by painful memories of her own childhood sexual abuse at his hands—and the following 24 years of her silence. In this cinematically striking and poetic documentary, López bravely films her story as a willful act to accept difficult truths while finding beauty in the process of healing. As she defies the cultural silence that pervades her family and confronts her abusive grandfather, who is a Baptist minister, a world of generational abuse unfolds, and she quickly discovers she is not alone. Through archival family footage and intimate moments with her family, López has created a film about confronting painful truths and the beauty one can feel when they reach the other side of grief.

Video Librarian | Gabrielle Stecher
 "Silent Beauty makes clear how documentary filmmaking can be a powerful tool for disrupting the cultures of silence and abuse that allow predators to traumatize without consequence."

Educational Media Reviews Online | Reviewed by Susannah Benedetti, Associate Director, University of North Carolina Wilmington
"Jasmín Mara López’s directorial debut is a lyrical exploration of her family’s spiderwebbing secrets, uncovered as an adult when she acknowledges the childhood sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her grandfather, a Baptist minister."

Journal of International Women's Studies | Reviewed by Mohosin Mandal
"Silent Beauty is a film directed, acted, and produced by women and for the women
who refuse to be prey to the patriarchal tradition of silence."

Press via Silent Beauty website

Jasmín Mara López is a Mexican-American filmmaker who divides her time between Los Angeles and New Orleans. She was born in the U.S., but her familial roots are in Mexico. Jasmín's childhood was affected by issues experienced on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Her experiences instilled in her a strong passion for immigrant rights, youth empowerment, and social change.
Check out this interview from The Video Consortium with director Jasmín Mara López about her debut documentary Silent Beauty, and how she consciously centered her impact campaign around the voices of survivors of childhood sexual abuse.