Over the last decade, Mexico has seen a surge of female filmmakers giving new voice to the harsh reality that surrounds them, a reality that persists even after the election of the country’s first female president two years ago.
Documentary filmmaker Tatiana Huezo arrived with the acclaimed Tempestad (2016), the story of two women who fall victim to corruption and injustice in Mexico. It paved the way for her fiction debut, Noche de fuego (2021), which earned a special mention at Cannes. That film widened the focus from two women to three girls in the southern state of Guerrero, where a quinceañera party is overshadowed by the horror of teenage girls being kidnapped, disappeared, and trafficked. In between, Fernanda Valadez’s directorial debut, Sin señas particulares (2020), centered on another female protagonist: a mother who confronts the system while searching for her missing son.
Four years after that 2020 breakthrough at Sundance, Valadez and Astrid Rondero, her partner in the production company Enaguas Cine, returned to the festival and won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Sujo (2024). This time, women are supporting but crucial characters around its protagonist, Sujo, who is orphaned at four when his father, a hitman, is killed in Tierra Caliente, another no man’s land in the western Mexican state of Michoacán. The boy grows up facing his father’s legacy in his surroundings, with a fate that seems doomed to repeat itself.
Just as it did at Sundance, Sujo made Rondero and Valadez the darlings of last year’s Ariel Awards (Mexico’s equivalent of the Academy Awards), winning Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress for Yadira Pérez as Nemesia, Sujo’s guardian. The real Mexico sadly reminds us that these stories are still happening: just weeks ago, a 15-year-old known online as “Chuchito Pistolas,” who had 2,000 followers, was killed while still active in the field and recruiting other teens. In moments like these, film remains a solid tool for art and education to make a difference while taking a stance.