(Mexico City) No one is a prophet in his country: director Guillermo del Toro launched a call on Friday for the broadcast in Mexican independent theaters of his latest opus, Pinocchiowhile denouncing “the systematic destruction of Mexican cinema”.
The production house PimientaFilms “is looking for independent rooms” in three states for the distribution of the film, indicates the director on his Twitter account, citing the defection of a large distributor, Cinemex.
The latter would have retracted, according to specialized magazines, because the film could only stay two weeks in exclusivity in theaters from November 24, before being included in the offer in streaming from the Netflix catalog.
bardothe film by another giant of Mexican cinema, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, is theatrically in Mexico exclusively ahead of its next Netflix listing.
Mr. Del Toro also considered that “the systematic destruction of Mexican cinema and its institutions – the construction of which took years – has been brutal”.
The director shared the press release from the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences (Amacc) announcing a “postponement of the call for the Ariel Prize 2023” (the equivalent of the Oscars in the United States) due to a “serious financial crisis”.
The Mexican Academy regrets that “support from public resources has decreased considerably in recent years”. “The State, which has been the engine and the support of the Academy for a long time, has renounced its responsibility as the main promoter and broadcaster of culture in general and cinema in particular”, affirms the Amacc.
Other cultural sectors have also complained about budget cuts by the left-nationalist government since it came to power at the end of 2018.
At the same time, the latter claims to promote the culture of indigenous communities.
“It is not a question of denying the artistic expression of anyone […] they are all at the same level. There is not a scholarly art and a popular, despised art,” Jesus Ramirez, the president’s spokesman, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, told AFP last week on the sidelines of four days of artisans’ parades. natives to Mexico.