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Directed by Gael García Bernal

Narrative Feature / Mexico / 95 mins

Strand: Viva Voce: Stories of Women

UK Premiere

Review:

Gael García Bernal is an international star who has been at the very centre of the resurgence in Mexican cinema since the turn of the millennium. His second feature film as director, after 2007’s DEFICIT, sees the star return to the Mexico City slums from which he made his name in AMORES PERROS. Cagalera (Benny Emmanuel) and Moloteco (Gabriel Carbajal) are two teenage tearaways trying to hustle their way out of the San Gregorio Atlapulco district of Mexico City. They are ‘Chicuarotes’, a slang name given to local residents of this slum area, but Cagalera, in particular, longs to be something more. Hatching a plan to get himself and his girlfriend - Sugehili - as far away as possible from home, Cagalera ropes Moloteco into a series of ever more desperate, elaborate, and downright ridiculous crimes. Deftly straddling the divide between absurdly comic crime caper and hard-hitting gangland crime drama, Bernal’s sophomore effort is a freewheeling, high-octane rampage through the desperate landscape of Mexico City’s southside suburbs. / Review by Rohan Berry Crickmar

Credits:

Director: Gael García Bernal

Writer: Augusto Mendoza

Producers: Marta Nuñez Puerto, Gael García Bernal, Thomas Benski

Cast: Benny Emmanuel, Gabriel Carbajal, Leidi Gutiérrez, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Dolores Heredia