For Samuel Douek, director and founder of the Hola México Festival – which celebrates films made in the tricolor country – it was a great opportunity for the Los Angeles audience in these post-pandemic days to experience current, rebellious, romantic cinema, full of opportunities and characters with dilemmas and dreams of our times with a Mexican stamp and flavor.

“We are very pleased to be able to count on the support of an association like the HFPA, which has done wonders for international cinema in the United States and around the world,” Douek stressed.

This year’s edition of the largest Mexican film festival outside of Mexico, which was held from October 2 to 10, also continued its mission to bring together new talent from Latin America based in California.

 

In an interview, Douek said about the 14th Hola México, “In this edition, we wanted to highlight that Mexican cinema continues to advance, producing extraordinary films in all ranges, not only documentaries and art films but in all kinds of genres. And that it continues to grow. Also, this year, we emphasized the presence of Latin women filmmakers, dedicating space for conversation between artists and the public.”

Douek pointed out that during the nine days of the festival, the diverse screenings projected the mosaic of perspectives from which people could look at Mexico.

There were, for example, the stories of a group of Muxes, non-binary people in Oaxaca, in Finlandia by Horacio Alcalá; the portrait of border violence in El norte sobre el vacío (North Over Emptiness) by Alejandra Márquez; and the perspective of a child who accompanies his father on a desperate journey in Estación catorce (Station Fourteen) by Luana Cardoso.

Films nominated for the Ariel award of the Academy of Mexico also participated, such as 50 (Or Two Whales Meet On the Beach) by Jorge Cuchi’s debut film; El diablo entre las piernas (The Devil Between the Legs) by Arturo Ripstein; El oro en la cerca (The Gold in the Fence) by Joaquín del Paso; and Nudo mixteco by Ángeles Cruz.

Some films were represented in person by talents, including La civil, whose screening was attended by actress Arcelia Ramírez. The movie received a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival.

Open to the general public, Hola México opened at the Montalbán Theater in Los Angeles with the screening of the comedy Lecciones para scoundrels (Lessons for Scoundrels), by Gustavo Moheno who was accompanied by his co-writer Ángel Pulido, the protagonist Danae Reynaud, actor Marius Biegai, co-stars Joaquín Cosío and Diana Bovio.

Moheno, who considered the screening in Los Angeles as his second premiere, following the one in Mexico, due to the magnitude of the LA event and after-party, said, “In particular, it was a great opportunity for me as director of Lecciones para canallas to have inaugurated this year’s Hola México Festival. It has been impressive to see the Montalbán Theater filled with an enthusiastic audience reacting to the film, laughing and connecting with the story.

“This is the largest showcase of Mexican cinema that exists in the United States and also shows the great diversity that we have in the cinematographic work in my country. It is a festival that presents from the most commercial projects to the most artistic. It is an event that is close to my heart.”

 

Undoubtedly at the heart of Hola México, as it has been in the past seven years, is the Tomorrow Filmmakers Today (TFT) program, led by Diana Luna, in which 20 Latin talents selected from different fields of filmmaking, in front of and behind the camera, have the opportunity to be exposed to major LA talent agencies, visit studios in Hollywood, and learn firsthand about the costs and challenges of producing film and television.

Douek, underscoring the female presence behind the lens, cited, “We dedicated one day to a talk with TFT graduates in which the generation of 2022 and the public were able to interact and see their new productions. We had Selina Rangel (TFT 2018) with her latest film, Single Mother by Choice, and Jimena Muhlia (TFT 2018) with her short film, Lily, at the Real Theater in downtown Los Angeles.”

Luna explained what it means for each of those chosen for TFT to be immersed all the time, thinking about their present and future, combining the flavor of their various cultures and their Latin countries, to create an onscreen sensibility that resonates in Spanish.

Luna said, “I am very touched that these 20 creative minds we chose this year are part of a network of 100 filmmakers who help each other. All of them successful in these years, representing the Latino community with films that have won or been nominated for important awards. The truth is that the TFT program speaks of today.”

She thanked Warner Media, NBCU, Disney Launchpad, CAA, Sundance, Hillman Grad, and different organizations for their support and highlighted the participation of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as sponsor and promoter.

 

 

Among the enthusiastic comments for the TFT were by Uruguayan actress and filmmaker Fiorella Vescovi, part of this year’s TFT generation, who presented her short film, Mal de amores (Illness of love) Her film’s premiere came along with a dozen other productions by her colleagues celebrating characters from the LGBTQ+ community with stories of love, misunderstandings and the power of friendship.

Vescovi, who had the opportunity to walk on the Hola México red carpet together with her fellow filmmakers, remarked, “This has been one of the great experiences of my life since the first day when I met my 19 colleagues. All of this was very inspiring. You could feel the energy in the room and how all these artists took their vocation as storytellers with something serious to contribute to their community.”

Gabriela Paciel, whose short films as director and writer have already been at festivals in the United States and Mexico, in addition to having received a scholarship in Spain to develop her script projects, shared her memories of how, six years ago, the TFT launched her career in Hollywood.

“It helped me understand that I was not alone fighting Goliath but that there was a whole community of Latino filmmakers like me breaking barriers and trying to tell our stories. I also met people like Mariscela Mendez, who became my director of photography for different projects.”

Conferences such as “Violence vs Empathy: cinema as an instrument of social transformation” were part of the collaboration between Hola México and UNAM Los Angeles, bringing together professors, director Marcelino Islas, and actress Danae Reynaud, to talk about the power of the so-called seventh art in the community.

For both Douek and Luna, Hola México works because of how people who come to the annual film event are moved by the desire to continue watching, enjoying, and doing their film work.

Luna concluded, “I am very happy that there are many young people who are working to tell their stories. They are all ready to open like a flower.”

 

Translated by Mario Amaya