Tribute to Mexican Cinema

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After Morocco, Spain, Italy, Egypt, Great-Britain, South Korea and France, the Marrakech International Film Festival will pay tribute to Mexico during its eleventh edition.

Today, Mexican cinema is the most productive and the liveliest in Latin America. This Latin- American cinema is known for its diversity and for the international aura of some of its talents.
Both dynamic and ambitious, the Mexican film industry has the ability to conciliate popular high-budget productions and complex art films.

The festival will celebrate the young generation, the new Golden Age of Mexican cinema, exemplified for the last ten years by the international recognition of Mexican talents such as:
Guillermo Del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Carlos Reygadas, Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, Amat Escalante, Rodrigo Pla, Michael Rowe, Fernando Eimbcke, Francisco Vargas, Rigoberto Perezcano …

Before the 1930s, the first Mexican films were mostly documentary films on the Mexican revolution; fiction films took a long time to emerge.

The 1930s saw the birth of a film industry that was about to become a reference for the whole Spanish-speaking world. The “ranchera” comedies, melodramas that portrayed an idealized rural Mexico, became the archetypal national genre at that time.
In the 1940s, as Hollywood was coveting Mexican icons (like Maria Felix or Dolores del Rio), a new genre successfully developed: spectacular literary adaptations.

The 1950s saw the beginning of a decade-long artistic crisis and the supremacy of vampire and mummy films: the golden age of Mexican fantasy film.

This is also when “Santo”, the hero of the “Lucha Libre” films, became the icon of a tremendously popular folk culture.
Paradoxically, at this very period, exiled Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel directed in Mexico some of the most important films in his career: “Los Olvidados” in 1950, or “The Exterminating Angel” in 1962 for instance.

The 1970s were the age of the Mexican Cinema revival, notably with Alejandro Jodorowsky’s mythical trilogy (“Fando y Lis” (1968), “El Topo” (1970) and “The Holy Mountain” (1973)), and with the founding of “Cine Independiente” around three major directors: Arturo Ripstein, Felipe Cazals and Rafael Castenado.

This trio of mentors preceded the blooming of a new generation of Mexican filmmakers. Guillermo Del Toro was the first director to achieve recognition with “Cronos” (1993). A friend and collaborator of Del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, shot in 2001 “Y tu mama también”, a film that revealed two prime Mexican actors: Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna.

The first film of Alejandro González Iñárritu (“Amores perros” in 2000) was a worldwide success.
Two other directors then made a name for themselves on the scene of international film festivals: Carlos Reygadas (“Japón”, 2002) and his cinematographer turned director Amat Escalante (“Sangre”, 2005).

Also to emerge lately were filmmakers Francisco Vargas (« El Violin » 2004), Rodrigo Pla (“La Zona”, 2007), Fernando Eimbcke (“Lake Tahoe”, 2008), Michael Rowe (“Año bisiesto”, Camera d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival)…