Mexican Cinema Today and Tomorrow
Also in this edition: Marijuana ¡Salud! Historic blow to drug traffickers. Trump seeks economic changes in Cuba. Farewell to the salsero “architect of the New York sound.”
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Nurturing the New Cinema
The famous names of Mexicans making films are well known internationally: Guillermo del Toro, Gael García Bernal, Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Salma Hayek, Diego Luna. Less well known is the surge of new independent fiction films, documentaries, and other Mexican audiovisual works that have emerged over the past 10 years.
To boost the country’s filmmaking community, President Claudia Sheinbaum recently announced a comprehensive support plan for the industry. It includes a 30 percent tax incentive for productions that use at least 70 percent Mexican suppliers and have a budget under 40 million pesos. Other measures address training, production, distribution, and preservation of Mexican film.
“The vision of our President, how she immediately understood the economic boost this would mean for Mexico and how it would help not only our film community. The financial support and also the personal pride for Mexico,” said actress Salma Hayek Pinault. “The ability to tell more stories that represent us… The power to take control and say: ‘This is Mexico, not what they’re selling you.’”
Producer Inna Payán, known for films such as La Jaula de Oro and En el camino, explained that the measures included in this comprehensive plan will allow “productions that were moving to Spain or Colombia to stay here, because the rebate will reduce market risks.” She added that this “mechanism not only helps us obtain a type of financing, but also promotes structural rebalancing in the industry, strengthens independent productions, and protects our cultural sovereignty.”
In this new Mexican cinema, the documentary genre stands out. One of the most watched films in theaters in 2021 was ¿Qué les pasó a las abejas?, directed by Adriana Otero and Robin Canul. El Eco, a film by Tatiana Huezo set in Puebla, won Best Documentary and Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival. Llamarse Olimpia, by director Indira Cato, won Best Mexican Documentary at the Guadalajara International Film Festival. La Reserva, about the struggle to defend the environment and rural life in Mexico, by Pablo Pérez Lombardini, was the big winner at the 23rd Morelia International Film Festival.
There are also notable fiction films, including several that portray contemporary realities in a documentary style. One of the most award-winning Mexican films, La jaula de oro, is an epic poem that dismantles the American dream through the story of teenage migrants traveling to the United States. The new work by producer Inna Payán, En el camino, was selected for the 2025 Venice International Film Festival.
No nos moverán, the debut feature by Mexican director Pierre Saint Martin Castellanos, deals with forgiveness and revenge, set against the events of October 2, 1968, at the Plaza of the Three Cultures. El diablo fuma (y guarda las cabezas de los cerillos quemados en la misma caja), directed by Ernesto Martínez Bucio, tells the story of five siblings abandoned by their parents and left with their grandmother, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and haunted by Beelzebub.
Sujo, directed by Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez, was selected to represent Mexico at the 2025 Goya and Oscar Awards. Trailer. Moscas, the recent work of filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke, was a highlight of the Berlin International Film Festival program this February. Clip.
The Quote:
“Mexican film is popular due to its lack of pretension, which is determined by the lack of pretension of the vast majority of its audiences.”
—Carlos Monsiváis
In Case You Missed It
◻️ Marijuana ¡Salud! The special issue on María, mota, cannabis, in La Jornada del Campo offers diverse perspectives on marijuana, with the goal of “legitimizing the right to cultivate and use it… to know and understand its importance for life and health,” its long history in Mexico, its emergence in the country as a cultural fusion—Indigenous Malinalli, African marimba, and Catholic María—and how it forms part of the struggle for collective health in several countries.
◻️ Historic blow to the narcos. Rubén Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, “El Mencho,” leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and one of the most wanted drug traffickers in the world, was killed by the Mexican army this past Sunday. The cartel unleashed acts of violence in 20 states, setting fire to vehicles, banks, gas stations, and stores, and carrying out more than 252 blockades. Activities were suspended at some airports and classes were canceled in schools in the region, but the government said that 24 hours later, calm had begun to prevail and a return to normalcy was underway, although violent scenarios in the near future cannot be ruled out. After congratulating Mexico, the Trump administration called for more to be done, and in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, the president took credit for the blow against the kingpin, raising questions, writes Julio Hernández, about the role of the U.S. government in a new strategy of “bullets, not hugs.”
On El Pulso de La Jornada: El Mencho: intelligence, conflicting accounts, and the war on drugs.
◻️ 131,800 missing and disappeared persons. “The crisis of violence in Mexico not only persists, it is worsening if we look at other dimensions beyond homicides, such as enforced disappearances, the forensic crisis, and the impunity with which networks of large-scale criminality operate throughout our country,” writes human rights expert Mario Patrón. In February, the Interior Ministry announced a new alert system to mobilize all of the government to search for missing and disappeared persons.
◻️ Trump seeks economic changes in Cuba. For at least some U.S. government officials, the intensification of the embargo is primarily aimed at forcing the Cuban government to abandon its economic model and open more space for private investment. In this context, Trump will allow the sale of crude oil to private businesses on the island.
◻️ Billionaires in Mexico double their wealth in five years. “Mexico’s ultra-rich have never been as numerous or as wealthy as they are today,” reports Oxfam Mexico. There are now 22 billionaires in the country with a combined fortune of $219 billion. Mexico is one of the most unequal nations in the world, and this reflects an economic model that for years has favored capital profitability at the expense of public well-being.
◻️ La Pescadora, a milestone in Siqueiros’ evolution. La Pescadora is an “imposing” work, not only because of its size—measuring 166.5 by 122 centimeters—but also for its bright, bold colors. It was executed on masonite using duco, or pyroxylin, an industrial paint used for automobiles. Art historian Laura González Matute believes it is essential for the piece to be more widely known, since it “marks the shift between an earlier and a later Siqueiros.”
◻️ Farewell to the salsa musician, “architect of the New York sound.” Willie Colón, known as the “Bad Boy of the Bronx,” was instrumental in the Caribbean musical explosion in New York and in shaping the Fania sound, which also became a powerful soundtrack in the struggle for Latino identity and civil rights in the United States. His collaborations with Héctor Lavoe and Rubén Blades are historic.
🎧 What We Are Listening To
Tiburón. Wilie Colón & Rubén Blades.
Edited by David Brooks and Jim Cason in the United States, Tania Molina Ramírez in Mexico City, of La Jornada, and Elizabeth Coll in Tokyo. More information here.