Mexico has become a mecca for young people who want to work in films, attracting budding filmmakers from other parts of Latin America. Greats such as Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñarritú, to mention a few, opened a huge door helping Mexican productions that, previously, might never have been able to obtain the necessary financing, to be made and attract the recognition they deserve. In this tumultuous year, despite the obstacles faced under the pandemic, astonishingly some productions struggled through. Among them is ‘Sin Señas Particulares’ (Identifying features 2020) by the talented Fernanda Valadez.

Fernanda Valadez, a graduate of the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC) is a director, writer and producer, who was born in Guanajuato, Mexico in 1981. This is an area of central Mexico that is part of the macro-region of the Bajío, a lowland  comprising a narrow valley,  so that buildings are situated on narrow and winding  streets, so much so, that many vehicles cannot travel on them at all, nor up the steep stairs that climb the mountainsides.  Right from the start, Valadez’s talents attracted awards with her first short film ‘De Este Mundo’ (Of this world. 2010). It won the Best Short Film prize at the Guanajuato Film Festival and went on to be considered the Best Mexican short of the year by the Mexican Chamber of Film Industry.

‘400 Maletas’ (2014) is Fernanda Valadez’s graduation film, a short that won the  ‘Oscar Infantil’ (Young Oscar) in Mexico. This led her writing the script of her first feature ‘Sin Señas Particulares’ that has been so well received at many festivals, including the recent 2020 BFI London Film Festival.

The script of 'Sin Señas Particulares', co-written with Rondero, was facilitated by a grant for ‘Young Artists’ from the Mexican Fund for the Arts (FONCA). Later it also received a ‘Work in Progress Award’ from the San Sebastian Film festival.  It was completed with funds from FOPROCINE (Mexican Fund for the Production for Quality Cinema) and also with post- production support from EFICINE.

‘Sin Señas Particulares’ is set in the borderlands of Mexico and the USA, and tells of a mother’s traumatic search for her son in this lawless area. Magdalena (superbly played by Mercedes Hernández), decides to go in search of her son Jesús (Juan Jesús Varela) who disappeared on route to the border (with hopes of crossing into the USA with his equally young friend Rigo). The police are uninterested and blasé, merely resorting to pulling out books of distressing photographs of nameless corpses that have been recovered in the area. Magdalena meets a lad, Miguel (David Illescas) who, having been deported from the USA is also searching, for his mother. Together they travel through arid, desolate and militia-controlled landscapes desperately looking for clues as to their possible whereabouts.

Juan Jesús  Varela as Jesús

It is a shocking indictment of the difficulties of controlling these border areas and the destructive violence that prevails, coupled with the indifference of the authorities to the resulting human tragedies. As in Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘ Roma’ (2018), Valadez focusses on a middle-aged  indigenous woman who appears mild and pliable, but proves to be made of true grit.

Valadez was determined to avoid being predictable: -

“… I wanted the audience to feel that, despite the huge differences in the characters, due to their social context and cultures [in the end], we are all similar. This is a mother like any other mother, making a journey in the extraordinary circumstances  that she is facing… Fortunately,  [ I have had no similar experiences] with my own family or friends, but, in Mexico, in the years between 2011 and 2013,  we found out about so many tragic and shocking situations,  that I felt compelled to tell this story.”

In sharp contrast to many films that rely on gratuitously violent scenes, Valadez focussed on a more internal battle: -

“…because I think that when you talk about these visible social and political issues and you tell the story from the social perspective, then instead of feeling close to the characters, you become distant… because you see if from your head and not from your emotions. What I wanted to do was not to make [another] classic Latin American film, in terms of being naturalistic and tackling the political issues from a ‘Russian’ perspective,  but to use empathy and concentrate on the emotional journey so that you can feel for the characters instead of ‘thinking’ about them.”

Given the film deals with the disappearance of young people, mere teenagers, it adds to the shock value: -

“[It is very frequent that such young people try to cross the border]. As a matter of fact, when we were casting the actors, it was kind of a moral issue, because I wanted to use actors from the state where I was born, Guanajuato. These boys are really people that don’t have many prospects, hopefully, one of them is going to study and progress. The boy, [Rigo, played by Xicoténcatl Ulloa] who has a white skin stain on his face,[since we finished filming] has crossed the border, so he is already in the USA. When we [originally] cast him, he seemed to have already had one experience of trying to cross the border and at that time he was only 15…”

The film has a very distinctive pace. There is minimal dialogue and a slow-burn feel which is quite mesmerising, as at times, the characters seem to merge with their surroundings and their landscape as the tale slowly unfolds: -

“Perhaps, on average it is, kind of, our tempo… but I also wanted to have time, in this journey, to allow the landscape to come in and to allow the landscape to express what is happening inside of the characters”.

It is in this respect that the cinematographer Claudia Becerril’s work has excelled.  The quality of light and the camerawork definitely elevated this production to another level. With Valadez, they chose to use Bokeh (which is an effect of a soft, out-of-focus background that you get when shooting a subject, using a fast lens, at the widest aperture, such as f/2.8 or wider). This added intimacy and resonance when you needed to get closer to the character in a wider environment, in the police station, for instance, where her isolation is emphasized by the fluorescent light, the blurring and (not to be forgotten) the carefully selected sounds that envelop her: -

“I had been wanting to work with Claudia for a long time. She has a lot of experience shooting documentaries and also fiction.  I think she accomplishes the best of both worlds, the agility to deal with situations when needed, but also a lot of talent to sculpt lighting…”

This combination of camera work and its distinctly different take on a well-known border story, has helped the film to do very well at many festivals.  With the images and the sounds, Valadez manages to give the film a magical, even haunting quality, with abandoned houses in desolate landscapes and the constant threat of danger and death. 

'Sin Señas Particulares'  landscape

Valadez emphasizes just how surprised they have been at the reception worldwide.  She was keen to emphasise that their association with Avanti Pictures has been particularly beneficial.   A new company with a clear objective, Avanti Pictures, run by Jack Zagha and Yossy Zagha, is committed to producing quality films.  They wish to seek out the best of Mexican talent and foster it, because they have ‘a passion for cinema’. They like to work closely on projects from the very conception, providing the best support  they can at all levels along the way: -

“They have more experience with finance. With the social things that are happening, it was very difficult to finance, so we approached them and they were very helpful with the financing of the film and also, they trusted us, and they let us do what we wanted.”

David Illescas as Miguel 

‘Sin Señas Particulares’ won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Best Screenplay, (with her co-writer Astrid Rondero) and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for dramatic World Cinema.  This productive friendship and working relationship with Astrid started when they were students together: -

“It began with her graduation and her [graduation] film and mine. Then her first feature that I produced, so this is our second feature [together] and we are now financing a third production on which we also collaborate as co-writers…  I wrote the [‘Identifying Features’] script with Astrid and we worked on it for quite a long time… we are now definitely planning to work together on this new script.  We have a friendship that we’ve established over almost 8 years now, since we were students. [Our new project] talks about violence but we want it to be more hopeful this time... on ideas that emerged when we were writing our other features. It’s about an orphan of the cartels. It is a coming-of-age movie and we wanted to explore what it takes for a young man to commit acts of violence?”

 There has been concern in Mexico that the violence is spreading south from the borders and out into other parts of the country and there is a deep hope that something can still be done to control it. This film has not yet been screened in Mexico, so it will be interesting to gauge the reaction to this different viewpoint on the subject.

“We certainly hope something can be done… but right now I am  not particularly optimistic, this violence … it has been travelling between different areas in Mexico … it began on the border and it has spread – moved… to the central states and depending on the power struggle between the cartels it has been [constantly] moving.”

Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero

This is an excellent film with a substantially female cast and crew, so that bodes well, coming from a Latin American country where, as in much of the world, machismo still prevails in many industries. We now look forward to Fernanda Valadez’s next production which will, doubtless, also shine a new light on some of the disturbing issues of violence in Mexico.

‘Sin Señas Particulares’ (2020) 

Writer/ Director Fernanda Valadez Rodríguez

Cast:  -

Mercedes Hernández – Magdalena

David Illescas – Miguel

Juan Jesús Varela – Jesús

Ana Laura Rodríguez – Olivia

Laura Elena Ibarra – Chuya

Xicoténcatl Ulloa – Pedro

CREW

Cinematographer  Claudia Becerril Bulos

Art director  Dalia Reyes

Editing  Fernanda Valadez, Astrid Rondero, Susan Korda

Producers  Fernanda Valadez, Sstrid Ronder, Yossy Zagha and Jack Zagha Kababie.

Sound   Milton Aceves 

Sound Design  Omar Juárez Espino