GUATEMALAN film Nuestras Madres (Our Mothers) has become the country’s first film to win an International Critics’ Week award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.

The film, directed by Cesar Diaz, depicts the massacre of Guatemala’s indigenous population during the civil war of 1960-66, which left around 200,000 people dead or missing.

Diaz’s father disappeared and it was his experience that influenced the film which tells the story of a young researcher trying to identify the victims who were buried in mass graves.

“The one who remains behind always has the feeling that the disappeared one day will appear, and that situation is terrible because you always have that hope,” he said.

The director said that Guatemala is “turning its back on the dead,” leaving the families without justice and he hoped the film would lead to an open discussion of the country’s troubled history.

The civil war followed a US-backed coup in 1954 with the regime murdering and disappearing hundreds of thousands of people during its brutal reign of terror.

Nuestras Madres became the first Guatemalan film to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Authors Society award in the 58th International Critics’ Week section.