Viviana García-Besné

The granddaughter of original El Santo producer Jorge Garcia-Besné and the archivist behind the restoration of the first two El Santo pictures travel to Havana, Cuba, to clandestinely visit the locations where the original films were made, and granddaughter Viviana realizes the trip was as much of a journey to chart her family evolution as of historical cinema exercise. Filmed almost entirely on iPhones to avoid drawing the attention of the authorities, it is also a brief portrait of a resilient population faced with a daily struggle to feed themselves under a severe embargo from the West.

A film about fragility; about a man obsessed with photographing the accident who discovered that the fate of others was his way of connecting to life. When does the image of the accident become the object of desire? Following the footsteps of Metinides and the work of contemporary tabloid photographers, we discover Mexico City through a narrative of crime scenes and accidents; rubbernecking though Metinides’ Gaze.

This film traces the unbelievable true story of the Calderón family, who built grand movie palaces in Mexico and the U.S., employing thousands to produce incomparable, hugely successful, and often reprehensible populist-genre films that were utterly and uniquely Mexican.