Mexican Documentary Movies

Twenty years ago, director Christiane Burkhard’s parents died in a plane crash. Now she has made a documentary, in collaboration with her sister, about remembering and coming to terms with the facts. First, she looks for accounts in the former homes and from family and friends of the couple. She also has a large number of old Super-8 recordings. Her mother was an enthusiastic amateur filmmaker, who captured all the major family events on film. Together with her sister, Burkhard watches the footage of the smiling faces of her parents. Making this documentary becomes a self-conceived ritual that should help her bid farewell to an unreal and unaccepted past. The subdued tone suits the difficulties all those involved have talking about the event, even after twenty years.

In the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, Saor, a young androgynous Indian, carries a coffin. He is taking Valentina, his lover, back to her native village to bury her. When Valentina left this village years ago, before becoming a transgender singer in a faraway city, people here knew her as Pol. Valentina's past and death remain an enigma. Yet bit by bit, through his encounters with the people of the village, Saor begins to perceive what connected them to Pol. Sensitive to the world around him, Saor, like a Shaman, enters their memories. Saor starts to understand that, like all homosexuals persecuted by Shining Path terrorists, Pol lived in terror. In the village cemetery, between rage and bitterness, Saor attends the burial of Valentina's body. A ceremony that is both a burial and an exhumation.

An experimental film in which time breaks again and again at the moment of death, where the seconds become whole lives condemned.

Immersive documentary which takes us n an intimate journey to the inner life of public baths through the voices of three characters: Felipe, the main clerk since 1984; Juana, a street sweeper in Mexico City's downtown; and Jose, a frequent client of more than forty years. Bath of Life becomes a confessionary for those who gather around the same place: the sauna.

The life stories of Juan Francisco's grandparents and parents, who arrived in Mexico in 1939 as refugees at the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). A family saga, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day.

Efrain, known as the Reaper, has worked at a slaughterhouse for 25 years. We will discover his deep relationship with death and his struggle to live.

There are promises that are impossible to keep. My uncle José made such a promise as a child in 1963 to my mother Ana Luisa, to whom he declared a special kind of devotion. There are always bonds like this between siblings establishing mysterious complicites. This is what José declared to little Ana Luisa: "The day that you die, I´m going to die with you".

In the deserted, littered streets of Santa Lucía, nothing ever seems to happen. But life behind the concrete walls is dominated by worry and uncertainty. When night falls, few dare to go outside for fear of the drug gangs. And even in broad daylight, there’s the danger of muggings, robberies, and murders.

This is the story of a man who challenged his country’s institutions by proclaiming himself legitimate president. This is the story of how the controversial Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who led the polls during 4 years, lost the election by less than half percent. It all begins while he is still Mexico City’s mayor, up to his self proclamation as president and his actions during the first days of Felipe Calderón’s government.

'Pedro', Liora Spilk's debut feature, paints a humorous and emotional portrait of Pedro Friedeberg, a Mexican plastic artist who became famous in the sixties for the creation of the hand chair. Between grumblings, ironies, reflections on art and disagreements, 'Pedro' achieves an endearing portrait of Friedeberg, and at the same time presents a tribute to friendship and creation.

An audiovisual portrait about La Merced neighborhood in Mexico City

A series of images, music and sounds which transport through Mexico's history, without any narrative sequence. The film spins constantly round the question 'Where are the singers from?'

12 years later, a failed school short film is resignified to share the multiple experiences that exist in the creation of a film.

Get to know the work of some women who were part of the first generations of one of the most important filmmaking schools in the world.

Short documentary

Documentary film about the daily odyssey that involves moving from home to work in three different cities of the world: Mexico City, Istanbul and Los Angeles. Three stories, three cities and three characters in different contexts but similar realities that survive long journeys and time of life lost.

The story of sport of Mayas

The relationship between a young director and her actress during the filming of her first short film.

Eufrosina Cruz was the first woman that became Congress President in Oaxaca. This is the story about women in politics in Mexico and their fight to reach their right to vote, their right to be in power. A journey that just started.

The life of Pedro Infante, with scenes from his best films and the chaos that his tragic death caused in the public.

Desperate for a baby and burdened by family and societal expectations, a woman fakes a pregnancy and gets tangled in a crime.

Sisyphus is a journey through the rehabilitation of addictions in Mexico. In the absence of a public infrastructure to combat this problem, the annexes are the alternative that addicts themselves have created. The annexes are unofficial rehabilitation centers in which a method of rehabilitation thought apart from medicine or professional therapy is offered.

Through cassette recordings of his voice and the super8 films of his travels, film shoots and festivals he would attend despite his political engagement as a screen idol of the Franco era, Paco Rabal (Best Actor Award at the first Festival in 1953 and Donostia Award in 2001) looks back at his life, regrets and contradictions. An impressive list of films recalling the time of his death in Bordeaux, like Goya, the man he played several times. In San Sebastián, he enjoyed success alongside Rafael Gil, Lucas Demare, León Klimovsky, Pedro Olea and Jaime de Armiñán.

Inspired by an exclusive interview and performance footage of Chavela Vargas shot in 1991 and guided by her unique voice, the film weaves an arresting portrait of a woman who dared to dress, speak, sing, and dream her unique life into being.

A discussion on technological education and its impact on promoting better wages and improving workers' quality of life.

Film record of the traditional and popular pilgrimage or journey of penance made by believers to the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, with a perspective of respect and an interest that goes beyond the sociological.

Beatriz Mira, a Brazilian filmmaker living in Mexico, films the housework carried out by women at the end of a decade marked by numerous political and social movements, including feminist groups that disputed the fact that women had been banished from the public sphere, and thus confined to the household. In their fights and debates, they wielded the motto ‘what’s personal is political’.

Pepedrilo and his peculiar connection with nature are embodied by the care and protection of a crocodile sanctuary, whose stability is put in danger day by day by the threat of men.

A small film crew goes through several locations including Europe, New York and Mexico.

To a growing number of Mexicans and Latinos in the Americas, narco-traffickers have become iconic outlaws and the new models of fame and success. They represent a pathway out of the ghetto, nurturing a new American dream fueled by the war on drugs. Narco Cultura looks at this explosive phenomenon from within, exposing cycles of addiction to money, drugs, and violence that are rapidly gaining strength on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border

This is a documentary about the mexican presidential election in july 2th 2006, in which the left candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, accused fraud against him and the people. This is the story of their fight for democracy.

Chapter 15 of the series 18 decades of life in Mexico in the twentieth century. Images of the cultural, social and political life in Mexico from 1970 to 1974. During the presidential term of Luis Echeverria Alvarez fantasies of prosperous and modern country it dissolves; Mexico live in political crisis. It is a time of omnipotence, barbarism, and violence intervention: the world seeks new ways. In Mexico, it held the World Cup, unionism is strengthened and inflation responds to the continuing economic imbalances.

Mabel tells us through her experiences how it is that at such a young age she starts in a world of prostitution, leading her to a process of evolution and transformation throughout her life.

Nearly half a century ago, Carmen Ignarra arrived to Mexico after leaving behind her Cuban homeland, in the hopes of becoming the greatest Caribbean actress in Hollywood. But the American dream tur- ned out to be more difficult than she’d thought, and her brief initial success was followed by a slow, painful decline. Today, at 80, the woman who was once Cuba’s most beautiful actress lives totally forgotten in an old mansion in Monterrey. There she survives thanks to her tenants—strange men who she is constantly blaming for mysterious thefts and disappearances. Laura, a young woman also from the Caribbean, arrives at the mansion to work as an assistant in cleaning and housekeeping. With her she brings a video camera and the secret intention of making a documentary about the diva. Together they talk about the past, about wasted talent and lost loves.

Documentary on the daily life of an Otomí community, highlighting the importance of their school education being in their mother tongue.

Short film commissioned by CineDifusión SEP as part of the "Jornadas Casals" music program, centering on the Spanish cellist and, in this case, illustrating the music of Claude Debussy.

Soil degradation, resulting from the excessive exploitation of trees, takes center stage in this powerful visual exhibition that warns of the dire repercussions of ecological imbalances caused by human ignorance and greed.

Morenita is a genre-mixing visual poetry experience that digs into the bridges and barriers of language, womanhood and ancestral curses through the intersecting journeys of two Latina immigrants in Los Angeles.

In one of Latin America’s most unequal countries, Francia Márquez, a Black Colombian rural activist, challenges the status quo with a presidential campaign that reappropriates the derogatory term “Igualada” — someone who acts as if they deserve rights that supposedly don’t correspond to them — and inspires a nation to dream.

A visual review of the importance of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in the life of the nation from the conquest to the present day.