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In Mexico, women directors take the lead

“The dream of making cinema was something far
away,” she recalled recently. “We grew up with the feeling that making films
was very difficult.”

Some 30 years later, however, that dream has
become very real. Valadez’s debut film, “Identifying Features,” won two top
prizes at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020, and this year it won best
picture, director and screenplay, among other prizes, at the Ariel Awards,
Mexico’s equivalent of the Oscars.

After decades of fighting for recognition in
an industry dominated by men, filmmakers like Valadez are setting Mexican
cinema ablaze, not just releasing more work but also gaining the critical
success and major awards that were long restricted to their male peers.

In a society in which machismo has often held
women back and gender-based violence is commonplace, the rise and recognition
of female filmmakers reflects a broader social change brought about by both an
emboldened feminist movement in Mexico and an urgent conversation about sexism
worldwide.

“It’s been years in the making,” Valadez said.
“But I’m very happy to be part of a generation of women telling powerful
stories.”

Getting here has not been easy, either for
Valadez or her fellow filmmakers.

Tatiana Huezo is a Salvadoran-Mexican
director, who in 2017 became the first woman to win the directing prize at the
Ariels. Her latest film, “Prayers for the Stolen,” which received a special
mention at the Cannes Film Festival this year, is Mexico’s candidate for the
best international feature Oscar at the 2024 Academy Awards and last week made
it onto the shortlist of finalists for the statuette. If nominated, Huezo would
become the first Mexican woman to compete for the award, even as fellow
countrymen like Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro have dominated the top
prizes of late.

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When Huezo was a little girl, her mother would
sneak her into the cinema to see art-house movies. The director remembers being
enchanted and at times frightened by the films of David Lynch and François
Truffaut. But when she began studying at Mexico’s Film Training Center, she
found herself confronted by sexism.

Huezo had enrolled to become a
cinematographer, but once in school, male directors wouldn’t take her on their
projects, so she ended up having to both shoot and direct her own.

“They would say that ‘it’s too heavy with the
cameras,’ ” she said.

Valadez encountered similar obstacles at the
Film Training Center, where she was one of only four women in a class of 15.
She said some female students at film schools were asked inappropriate
questions like whether they were going to have children or they would be able
to carry equipment.

“We women face more filters,” she said. “Men
in these generations are brought up to believe that destiny is in their hands.”

Sexism has long been an issue in Mexican film
schools, said Maricarmen de Lara, a feminist filmmaker and professor who was
director of the film school at Mexico’s National Autonomous University from
2015 to 2019.

The industry was even worse when she was a
young student, with sets ruled by men. “They were men who minimised the work of
women, and they did it publicly,” Lara said, adding that a few were violent.
“There were some cinematographers who wouldn’t even accept a woman assistant
photographer.”

But women have still managed to make films in
the country for decades, said Arantxa Luna, the critic and screenwriter,
pointing to Adela Sequeyro, who worked as a producer and director in the 1930s,
and María Novaro, who along with Lara, was part of feminist collective Cine
Mujer in the 1970s and ’80s.

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The legacy of the feminist film movement has
been particularly lasting for Mexican documentaries: Between 2010 and 2020
women directed a third of documentaries in the country, compared to just 16% of
fiction films.

Still, it’s been an uphill battle.

“Fifteen, twenty years ago in Mexico there
weren’t that many women directors,” said documentarian Natalia Almada, who won
a 2009 Sundance directing award. “Even just being out in the field as a woman
with a camera making films meant something.”

Off-camera, women have had an impact beyond
directing. Behind some of Mexico’s most prominent male filmmakers of the last
20 years have also been producers like Bertha Navarro, whose credits include
several of del Toro’s most acclaimed films, and Mónica Lozano Serrano, who was
an associate producer on Alejandro González Iñarritu’s “Amores Perros.” A
former president of the Mexican film academy, Lozano has in recent years
defended public funding for cinema in Mexico.

Meanwhile, the Hollywood success of Iñarritu,
Cuarón and del Toro, nicknamed “the three amigos<em>,” </em>also
helped the industry in Mexico, which has seen a surge in attention and money
for film. Almada said they “turned a kind of international gaze on Mexico as a
place where interesting work is being made.”

The result has been an avalanche of Mexican
cinema and a corresponding rise in the number of films made by women. In 2000,
“Amores Perros” was one of just 28 Mexican feature films; in 2019, there were
more than 200, according to official figures. In 2008, just five films were
directed by women, by 2018, that number had increased to 47.

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The filmmaking grew as society evolved. An
emboldened feminist movement has increasingly taken to the streets in Mexico, demanding
an end to gender-based violence, and the #MeToo movement has also emerged.

Valadez said the cultural shift provoked by
the #MeToo movement became apparent in the reception to her previous project,
“The Darkest Days of Us” (2017), the story of a woman haunted by her sister’s
death, directed by Valadez’s producing partner, Astrid Rondero.

“Before #MeToo became viral, when we were
still editing, there were comments that the film even felt aggressive toward
men,” she said. After the movement exploded, Valadez said, “it began to be
understood that it was a film that talked about what #MeToo was putting on the
table, the microaggressions, the violence, the abuse.”

The changes started by #MeToo have been felt
across the film industry in Mexico. In September, activist group #YaEsHora
(It’s Time), in collaboration with the Boston Center for Latin America and
eight Mexican production companies, started the country’s first “comprehensive
protocol against harassment,” a series of procedures and regulations to prevent
and punish sexual abuse in the film industry.

Meanwhile, the Film Training Center, where
both Valadez and Huezo studied, announced that beginning this year, half the
places in its main courses would be reserved for women.

Still, there is more work to be done,
directors say. Of the more than 100 Mexican feature films produced in 2020,
when the industry was affected by the pandemic, 17% were directed by women,
down from 20% the year before and 25% in 2018.

“There’s still a long way to go — it’s not yet
equal,” Huezo said. “And I hope we get there because it’s going to enrich
cinema so much.”

©2021 The New York Times Company

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