This outrageous comedy stages a soap opera of epic proportions, as one corrupt property developer faces trial for Mexico's violent history. The fourth feature from Santiago Mohar Volkow, Una historia de amor y guerra centres on real estate baron Pepe Sánchez-Campo, whose mega-mall development brings him into conflict with local guerrillas. For once, bribery and a call to Daddy might not be enough to save Pepe – a character more grotesque than the telenovela unfolding around him. Trying to sabotage Pepe's marriage to Constanza, her cousin and lover Teo records Pepe cheating. The resulting chaos precipitates in a burlesque bloodbath involving treachery, talking animals, colonial history and bartering in the afterlife.
Una historia de amor y guerra creates something new and a bit naughty, an anarchic silliness from a fresh voice in Mexican cinema. Mohar Volkow mixes allusions to classical art and period costumes with NSYNC ringtones, reaching beyond satire to condemn the ongoing legacies of corruption and colonisation since conquest. As the narrator describes, “history happens first as a tragedy and then as farce... afterwards comes comedy, then the absurd, and finally horror.” The filmmaker here stirs in a healthy portion of each.

Through a fragmented montage, Lumbre paints an elliptical portrait of the accidental death of a child by a stray bullet in the countryside of Mexico. We follow the characters through brief episodes of their lives creating a unity of humor and tone. Mixing the poetic with the political is a bold attempt to explore the possibilities of cinema to analyze violence without resorting to the spectacular tropes that it normally entails. Instead, Lumbre reads the violence that permeates everyday life even in the smallest gestures.

本片聚焦于墨西哥恰帕斯州一家非正规的康复中心。虽说这种类型的戒毒中心并不专业，有时甚至会采用非常手段，但却是大多数当地人接受治疗的唯一选择。影片没有从新闻调查的角度切入，而是借成瘾暗喻人的生存境遇，以此揭示人性的挣扎、困顿。