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Fast-emerging Mexican auteur, delivering knowing and cross.grained takes on life in Mixtec communities, actress-turned-director Angeles Cruz’s “Valentina or the Serenity” walked off Saturday night with the top best picture award and best actress (Myriam Bravo) in a high-caliber main competition at this year’s Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival.

Best actor went to “Money Heist’s” Rodolfo de la Serna, for his weighty turn in Paramount Television Intl. Studios’ “The Rescue.”

The Rescue

Cruz’s win underscored the focus and value of Huelva. Despite funding challenges, Latin America’s big three – Mexico, Brazil and Argentina – alone produced 660 features in 2022. It is simply impossible for the media to pay sufficient attention to all but a highly select clutch of top titles.

“Ibero-American cinema is constantly evolving. Now, it is very easy to find great films, if not in budgetary terms, then in artistic ambitions,” Huelva director Manuel H. Martin told...

The stories of three women intersect in a Mixtec community in rural Mexico

Dir: Angeles Cruz. Mexico. 2021. 91mins

With her first feature film, Mexican actress turned writer/director Angeles Cruz has fashioned a quietly powerful triptych of stories that speak about the plight of indigenous women in her country, combating the triple whammy of poverty, intolerance and toxic masculinity. While the subject’s a heavy one, Cruz’s compassionate and skillful storytelling, assisted by strong performances, results in a lighter, engaging alternative to the often hardcore Mexican approach to drama. And given the current openness to women’s stories, this...

We’ve all heard the warning, “If you play with fire, you’re gonna get burned.” Well, that’s nothing compared to the consequences if you steal gasoline straight from the source — an extremely high-risk practice now on the rise in Mexico, where the combustibility of extracting raw fuel from open fields is amplified by the dangers of dealing with the cartels who control this emerging black market.

However volatile, these activities have become widespread enough that the locals now have a word for such outlaws: “Huachicolero” — the original Spanish-language title of director Edgar Nito’s attention-grabbing, ignition-ready debut, “The Gasoline Thieves,” which earned its talented helmer the “best new narrative filmmaker” title at the Tribeca Film Festival. For complicated reasons, Mexican crime stories generally don’t translate well across borders: Those that play well at home tend to feel exaggerated and over-the-top compared to the cold-blooded ruthlessness of movies like “Sicario,...