At the recent Toronto Film Festival, Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo presented “Miss Bala,” which tells the story of an aspiring beauty queen who gets caught up in the seedy world of organized crime.
The film was loosely based on a real incident in which the 2008 winner of Miss Sinaloa was arrested along with several armed gang members in Zapopan. The film suggests her pageant victory was fixed by these criminals.
Questioned on whether such films desensitize citizens to drug violence, Garcia Bernal responded, “We have the active responsibility to show what is happening so that this isn’t a natural thing, something common. Films like this terrorize me and make me want to do things to change it.”
Garcia Bernal, a world famous actor, has also been honored by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), who awarded him the 2011 Human Rights prize “for his passionate commitment to the plight of migrants and for giving visibility to the suffering and courage of those who undertake the perilous journey north.”
Through “Los Invisibles,” a series of four documentaries, Garcia Bernal has drawn greater attention to an issue which affects thousands of desperate migrants and their families every year.