BEST FEATURE DOC - Urbanworld Film Festival | BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY - New Orleans Film Festival
Healing from Child Sexual Abuse • Generational Family Trauma • Women & Mental HealthDate of Completion: 2022 | Run Time: 87 minutes | Language: English and some Spanish with English subtitles | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript | Director: Jasmín Mara López | Producer: Jasmín Mara López | Editor: Sarah Garrahan | Director of Photography: Bron 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."
AWARDS
Best Feature Doc & NYWIFT Award for Excellence in Documentary Directing | Urbanworld Film Festival
Best Cinematography & Jury Mention for Best Louisiana Doc | New Orleans Film Festival
Special Jury Mention for Revolutionary Cinema | Indie Memphis
Best Feature Doc | Venice Film Week
Special Mention, Documentary | Puerto Rican Heritage Film Festival
Special Jury Mention for Best Latinx Film | Cinema Tropical
FESTIVALS
Miradas Diversas - Festival Internacional de Cine de Derechos Humanos
Cleveland International Film Festival
DocsMX
OLA's 19th Latino Film Festival
Portland Film Festival
Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival
BlackStar Film Festival
Galway Film Fleadh
Hot Docs International Documentary Festival
mujerDOC - International Documentary Film Festival on Gender
DOCUTAH
SCREENINGS
OC Film Fiesta
University of Mississippi
Director & Producer of SILENT BEAUTY