With the high profile enjoyed by Mexico in the recent Oscar competition (Alfonso Cuarón took best director for “Gravity”) and the international success of the Spanish-language blockbuster comedies, “Nosotros los Nobles” (We, the Noble Ones) and “Instructions not Included,” many are seeing a rosy future for filmmaking in Mexico.
Nowhere is this point of view more apparent than among people connected with the just-concluded Festival Internacional de Cine Guadalajara. FICG staffers, some of whom labor year-round in the halls of the University of Guadalajara, are sanguine about this year’s event, calling it unusually successful and pointing to what the 2014 lineup portends for the future of Mexican film.
“Right now Mexican movies are on their way,” said FICG Director of Programming Gerardo Salcedo. “We are finally getting a good reception in the world, in places like Cannes and Venice. And there have been some huge successes at the box office.”
Salcedo didn’t know if Mexico will be offering stiff competition to Hollywood anytime soon. “They produced more than 300 and Mexico just about 120 this year,” he said.
But he sees Mexican films as unique and high quality. And, unlike Hollywood, where movies follow trends, “Each Mexican film is quite different from the others. That’s amazing.”
“We’ve had five good years in Mexican film production,” he added.
“In the last five years, less foreign films have been made here,” agreed FICG’s Film in Progress Director Sarah Ross, explaining that because of lower filming costs, Mexico has in the past attracted many foreign filmmakers.“But that’s decreased because of fears about security.” A worldwide financial crisis in filmmaking also exists, she added, resulting in a general drop in production.
However, like Salcedo, Ross is seeing a surge in Mexican-made films.
“There’s a new era of young filmmakers with new stories, real stories. These are less ambitious projects that tell us about regular, struggling people.”
Agustín Eliab Juarez, a Mexican-American author who recently moved from San Francisco to the Guadalajara area, picked out similar trends in the Spanish-language Mexican films he saw in the 2014 FICG.
“These movies are character driven,” he said approvingly. “Very different from what is coming out of Hollywood. I think we’re on the verge of a new golden age of Mexican cinema,” similar to the one spanning the 1930s and 1960s.
Asked if violence characterizes new Mexican movies, Eliab said no. “That’s one of the misconceptions about Mexican movies.”
Ross noted that the Mexican movie, “Heli,” which won best director at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, was “super violent,” but said that in general, “It depends on what you’re watching. This year we had films about drug lords and gay teenagers. So there is always tension and danger in Mexican films.”
However, Salcedo added that, rather than violence, the trend he noticed in Mexican films this year was children. Yet even here, violence, or the threat of it, was an oppressive background theme.
“These movies took a very hard look at Mexican society. They were a testimony to the situation of children here, which is quite problematic. They were very touching. People are taking kids as a critical point of our society. They are an endangered species. They saw two situations: Mexican children are facing loneliness and chaotic situations at home.”
But he was upbeat about future prospects for films. “Now there is a blossoming, a lot of first time filmmakers who are in their thirties. They are working a lot.”
The business of filmmaking is going well in Mexico, Ross agreed. “A couple of films are being shot here right now, one company from England and an American company to start in July.”
She added that more people than ever came to the festival looking for distribution and participating “with accreditation, not just as viewers. And they stayed the whole week,” making professional contacts in the market area at the large Expo Guadalajara building.
“We had a lot of people at the theaters and a big press presence too. It was very successful.”