Alonso Ruizpalacios is one of the most talented filmmakers in the rich Mexican audiovisual panorama. The director of films like Güeros, Museum either A police movie, or series like Andor of Star Wars, He is the director awarded for his career with the Luna de Valencia distinction at the Cinema Jove festival in Valencia, which began last Thursday. Like other Mexican filmmakers, he has made his way in the US with his latest feature film The kitchen, starring Rooney Mara, which competed at the Berlin festival. But she maintains her work and life ties with his country of origin, where she was born 46 years ago. A country that reflects in her films and projects a distorted image through cinema. “Many Latin American cinematography was deformed to please the European public with its colonial guilt,” she stated in a meeting held on Friday within the contest.
Ruizpalacios expressed his confidence that the new president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, who will take the reins of the country as of October 1, will separate herself from her mentor, the current president Andrés López Obrador. “It is good news that a woman has finally reached these spheres of power. Emotions are mixed in some people. It is something we wanted and Mexico needs. But it is complicated because of how linked it is to the current president. I hope that he manages to split, detach himself, I trust that it will be like that,” she noted.
With a reflective speech and slow speaking, the filmmaker pointed out that “the six-year term” of López Obrador “has turned its back on culture” and has asked that it “stop seeing it as a luxury.” “The vision is like a luxury and not a necessity and a fundamental instrument,” he said at the event, presented by Carlos Madrid, director of Cinema Jove. However, he highlighted the important role that the Imcine institution plays in promoting Mexican audiovisuals.
Regarding his style when considering productions, he recognized the influence of theater, where reality “is much finer than fiction,” which has allowed him to use resources such as breaking the fourth wall and surprising the viewer: “ I’m very interested in the impulse to build a narrative and then break it. “It’s very seductive.” Difference between series, which involve “a more industrial, less personal process, with more commercial interests,” and films, which are presented as “a personal journey, with friends, more intimate and free, a space of creative freedom.”
with his film A police movie, which can be seen on Netflix and analyzes the corruption of the force through the experiences of two officers, sought to have “impact” on society. “In Mexico there is a relationship of anger towards the police and we wanted to break down the prejudices of the other side. Now, that film is shown in many police schools, because we wanted to make that impact and, luckily, we achieved it,” said the director of Museum.
And that way of not positioning oneself on a specific side of the story reflects his way of being: “I have always approached critical people, but the problem is that they take action. “Films are my way of protesting.” This “impartiality” has also brought him a lot of criticism, to which he responds that “there are always people who will think very differently than you” and, in his opinion, indecision is “exasperating, but very honest at the same time.”
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A few days ago he had the opportunity to listen to his admired Spanish filmmaker Víctor Erice, director of The spirit of the hive. “It was amazing, it was beautiful to listen to him, he is very wise,” he said, after expressing his excitement for having filmed The kitchen, whose premiere in Spain is scheduled for October, at the Churubusco Studios, where Luis Buñuel also did it. He regretted the limited cinematographic relationship between Spain and Mexico despite the multiple links between the two countries. “Cinema is an essential tool to be able to show the different realities of life and, above all, bring people to consensus, so we must take care of it from all fronts,” he said.
The festival has awarded Ruizpalacios, of whom a cycle is projected, for contributing “freshness, intelligence and humanism” with his work, showing “a great understanding towards very different characters, and even with spirits contrary to each other” and for being “a “A great chronicler of the vicissitudes of contemporary Mexico, who navigates the absurdities of his daily life without losing his sarcasm or his lightheartedness.”
