Murray State's Cinema International program presents the 2019 Mexican film Midnight Family, directed by Luke Lorentzen, this week. Tracy Ross speaks with program director Dr. Thérèse St. Paul about the upcoming screenings.
From the MSU Cinema International website:
"Experimenting with the ways in which non-fiction stories are told, director Luke Lorentzen’s films take viewers to meet otherwise overlooked, hard-working people. In Mexico City, the government operates fewer than 45 emergency ambulances for a population of 9 million.
This has spawned an underground industry of for-profit ambulances often run by people with little or no training or certification. An exception in this ethically fraught industry, the Ochoa family but many times, their passengers don’t have enough money to pay for their services… Academy award-winning Midnight Family is both a compassionate portrait of a working-class family, with their fun and candid moments, and a frightening ride through a broken healthcare system."
St. Paul explains that the director for Midnight Family started his film after the Ochoa family invited him to ride along as they offered medical services to a Mexico City neighborhood. While accompanying the family, Lorentzen realizes "that they often end up doing it for free."
"The people that [the family] comes in to help have no insurance, can not pay, weasel out of paying. They don't want to press charges because the police are very corrupt and, therefore, they get into more trouble. They barely make it. It's mostly two men and two young underage sons who operate this ambulance."
"They are apparently, from what I read, among some of the better ones," St. Paul continues. "In the private industry, where there are no guidelines for anything, a lot of these private ambulances are really not equipped sufficiently or don't even have the right training."
St. Paul says the central theme of Midnight Family is a dilemma between the natural instinct to care for others and the necessity of money to continue doing so. "They don't leave anybody laying on the ground to bleed to death. They don't ask them, 'can you pay' or, 'if you can't pay, I can't do this.' They take them anyway."
She explains that most medical services are offered to people who have suffered accidents related to living in a large city. "Gunshots, battered girlfriend, drug abuse, overdose, things like that," St. Paul says. "But also accidents—people falling from the 10th floor, terrible car crashes."
"Of course, we see that they're caught in this dilemma. They reflect upon it, they talk. This is all recorded. You get into their mind; you get into their dilemma. They say, 'if we weren't here, the woman would've never made it.' And yet, they didn't get paid. They didn't make a peso."
"They used their equipment, saline solution, gas, their medicines, their time. And that is, in my opinion, the tragedy of such a system where for-profit is not really for-profit. If you think that this is actually supposed to take place in quite an affluent neighborhood in Mexico City, you wonder what happens in the non-affluent neighborhoods."
MSU Cinema International presents Midnight City on Thursday, March 10th, in the Barkley Room, and Saturday, March 12th, in the Curris Center Theater. Both screenings begin at 7:30 p.m. and take place on the third floor of the Curris Center on Murray State's main campus.
Screenings are free and open to the general public, with a discussion to follow. For more information on the MSU Cinema International program, visit its website.
