New wave of Mexican directors succeeds internationally – Showalter to direct Chastain-Spencer holiday comedy
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MEXICO CITY, March 25, (Agencies): A trio of Mexican directors known as the Three Amigos has made their mark on Hollywood, dominating the Academy Awards best picture contest in recent years with films that have little connection to their homeland. But a new generation of Mexican filmmakers is finding international success with films produced in their own country.
Alonso Ruizpalacios, Amat Escalante and Michel Franco are part of a new wave of Mexican directors 40 or younger who— unlike Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro G. Inarritu — have focused on working in their native country despite the financial difficulties and safety issues.
Del Toro won best director and best picture earlier this month for his fantasy romance “The Shape of Water.” It was the fourth time in five years that a Mexican director took home the honor. He was preceded by Cuaron’s 2014 space thriller “Gravity” and Inarritu’s back-to-back wins for “Birdman” and “The Revenant” in 2015 and 2016.
All four projects featured major Hollywood stars, but not distinctly Mexican stories. The works of Ruizpalacios, Escalante and Franco are different, and have won awards at prestige-building film festivals abroad.
Ruizpalacios won the best screenplay award last month at the Berlin International Film Festival for “Museo,” starring Gael Garcia Bernal, about a 1985 theft at Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology.
“My main interest is to keep making films here in Mexico. Is something that interests me a lot,” Ruizpalacios said to The Associated Press in a recent interview.
Mexico, he said, “is a fertile land and is far from being over-exploited.”
Ruizpalacios, who in 2014 won best movie and best first film for “Gueros” at Mexico’s equivalent of the Oscars, the Ariel Awards, noted that Mexico’s tax incentives have made it easier for his generation to make movies.
The best-known incentive is the Eficine 189 created in 2006 — the year Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” was released — that allows taxpayers to contribute a percentage of their income taxes to a production company that wishes to make a Mexican film.
Each project can receive up to 20 million Mexican Pesos ($1 million) or up to 80% of the total cost of the to-be-produced film, and up to 2 million Mexican pesos ($107,000) for distribution.
Concentrated
“Everything used to be a lot more concentrated in a handful people. They were the ones with the support and now is much more democratized,” Ruizpalacios said. “I believe that I, and all my generation, got this very clearly: We could not have made the movies we have made and the ones we want to make without those (tax) changes.”
Escalante, whose credits include “Sangre” and “Los Bastardos” (“The Bastards”,) has said not only that he is interested in making more films in Mexico, but that he wants to work specifically in the central state of Guanajuato, host to the International Cervantino Festival of Arts but also known for its religious conservatism.
“There I live, there I know, there I feel safe filming,” he told the AP in 2016. “It has everything: there’s the field, the city, very interesting people.”
His films have garnered attention at international festivals, including a Cannes Film Festival award for best director for his 2013 film “Heli,”which explored the impact of violence in Mexico, portrayed through a relationship between a policeman and a young girl.
Franco, who won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes last year, said that he plans to keep working in his native country. He won for “Las Hijas de Abril” (“April’s Daughter”), about a pregnant teen and the conflicts that arise with her estranged mother.
“I am convinced there is no place where I can make better films than Mexico,” Franco told the AP in 2017. “I love my country very much. It also hurts a lot to see so many people not living to the fullest in Mexico for many reasons, because of all the conflicts we have, but that is also something that can be portrayed in cinema.”
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LOS ANGELES: Hot off the heels of his hit film “The Big Sick,” director Michael Showalter has lined up his next movie: Universal’s holiday comedy starring Jessica Chastain and Octavia Spencer.
Following a heated bidding war, the studio won the rights to the untitled pitch from Chastain’s Freckle Films and fast-tracked, adding Showalter as helmer. Universal beat out Fox and Paramount for the pitch, which follows two women fighting the elements to make it home for Christmas.
Chastain and Kelly Carmichael wrote the original treatment and “Crazy Rich Asians” scribe Peter Chiarelli is on board to pen the script. Chastain will produce with her company Freckle Films, along with Maven Pictures. Carmichael, Celine Rattray, and Trudie Styler will also produce.
Exec VP of production Erik Baiers and creative executive Mika Pryce will oversee the project for Universal.
The movie marks a reunion for Chastain and Spencer, who each earned an Oscar nomination for the smash hit “The Help,” with Spencer ultimately taking home the trophy for best supporting actress.
Showalter also co-created the Netflix series “Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later,” which is based on his and David Wain’s cult classic of the same title. Showalter has helmed several episodes of Netflix’s “Love” and “Grace and Frankie,” and TBS’ “Search Party.” He also recently directed “My Name is Doris.”
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