When Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco filmed in 2023 Dreamsthe immigration raids that his new film reflects were not part of international news. Now, in full force, that offensive has gained weight, but it only exacerbates a reality that in his opinion has always existed.
“A politician like Trump needs to benefit from generating fear and it is very sad, it is very unfair, but I wrote the film years ago. I had it in mind for many years because that has always been the reality, although now the speech is more frontal,” he tells EFE about the American Republican leader.
Franco (Mexico City, 1979) is in Madrid to present this film that competed in the 2025 Berlinale, which will premiere on June 19 in Spain and which brings together the Oscar winner Jessica Chastain on the big screen with the dancer Isaac Hernández, who makes his debut as the protagonist.
The relationship between a wealthy philanthropist and a Mexican dancer who has irregularly crossed into the United States to bet on that doomed love portrays both the complex power game between the two and, in more general terms, the one that unites Mexico with the United States.
“A politician like Trump needs to benefit from generating fear and it is very sad, it is very unfair, but I wrote the film years ago. I had it in mind for many years because that has always been the reality, although now the discourse is more frontal”
The scenario that the director shows in DreamsAccording to him, “it falls short compared to what is happening now.” In the US, he adds, there is a double standard with Mexicans, migrants from Central America and all over the world who go there to work.
“They allow them and use them, but when we have to be fair to them, they operate as if they don’t owe them anything,” emphasizes the author of films like After Lucia (2012), April’s daughters (2017) o Memory (2023), the latter also with Chastain.
The American dream that pushes the character in his latest film to risk his physical integrity by illegally crossing the border maintains its appeal despite the current reality in the United States.
“What happens is that people flee from worse realities. In other words, although the idea of the American dream may sound anachronistic, the reality is that, for example, in Mexico people flee from poverty, misery and drug trafficking,” says the filmmaker.
For Franco, “all cinema is political”, “all our acts are political”, “but films should not be so simple that they can be used as propaganda or have a very clear and obvious political intention.”
“Although the idea of the American dream may sound anachronistic, the reality is that, for example, in Mexico people flee poverty, misery and drug trafficking”
“Many are like that, but those age very poorly and do not have cinematic depth or real impact. I believe that cinema goes much deeper,” he points out.
He says he has never censored himself and hopes he never has to. His films have been screened at festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice and San Sebastián, which have also given space to works by other greats of the Mexican seventh art, such as Alejandro González Iñárritu or Guillermo del Toro.
“Mexico is a country of great contrasts, with undeniable cultural and historical wealth, and also with social inequality and the violence that this generates in an enormous way. The large border with the United States and the size of our economy, all that mix of things that work and that are not the vehicle for many films, some that seek to be commercial and others that seek to be interesting, generate so many interesting voices,” he concludes about the cinematographic strength of his country.
