Damián Alcázar: the new Film Law is not enough
Damián Alcázar, the actor behind the classic El rather, has mixed feelings about the new Federal Film and Audiovisual Law. Yes, he applauds the fact that it forces theaters to promote a Mexican title two weeks before the premiere and keep it on display for at least 14 days. But it doesn’t stop there.
“Anything that helps, that promotes, the exhibition of Mexican cinema is going to be very good… but it seems to me that 10% is nothing,” he says without a filter.
Their proposal is clear: special screens to watch national cinema, regardless of commercial agreements. “All large cities should have at least one Cinematheque,” he adds.
From Hollywood to drug traffickers and terror
Alcázar has been criticizing for decades how American films bombard us with ideologies. Now, as a star guest at the Guadalajara International Film Festival (FICG)—which he hasn’t been to for more than a decade—he jokes: “I come from being lazy, I come to eat drowned cakes.”
But not everything is relaxed. He has just opened the market in Spain with Carcoma, a black comedy where he plays a Mexican drug trafficker stuck in an apartment full of Spaniards. “He’s the most honest of all,” he says, laughing.
And what follows: a tape of exorcisms. “Horror is not a genre that I saw… but why not, it’s very good to play in that,” he confesses.
His last local appearance was El Mochaorejas, based on the real case of the kidnapper Daniel Arizmendi. The lesson? That Mexican cinema needs more than laws—it needs its own spaces.
