For more than a decade, more than 400 women and children have gone missing. Six videos that addressed the issue in Cuidad Juarez and Chihuahua, Mexico were shown throughout Thursday at the Nason House of New Mexico State University.

The small room quickly fell silent as the darkness permeated the room and noise from the speakers and light from the projector shed new light on the ever-present issue of social injustice.

With testimony from victims’ family members, professionals and activists the films were very compelling. Documentaries such as Seniorita Extraviada, directed by Lourdes Portillo, and Preguntas sin Respuestas, directed by Rafael Montero, focused on the victim’s families and many of the innocent people that have been accused of the crimes.

On the Edge, directed by Steve Hise, covered several angles of political and economic trends. According to the film, many of the victims’ families say that the women  were last seen leaving work, never to return.

“If it were not for [them] sending our daughters home from work than [they] would still be alive,” said one mother about the maquiladoras in Cuidad Juarez and Chihuahua.

The short film “Laboratory of Our Future” inspired by Charles Bowden, author of Juarez: Laboratory of Our Future, revealed the investigatory work of reporter Bill Conroy. In the film, Conroy speaks briefly about the drug trafficking and the assumed infiltrating of the police by crime organizations.

Moved by the murders that began in Cuidad Juarez in 1993, Lourdes Portillo directed the documentary film Senoiritas Extiviada. The film tells the stories of those kidnapped, raped and murdered in a poetic fashion.

“I wanted to create a film that honored the girls the way that their mothers remembered them,” said Portillo during the presentation.