Mexican Female Filmmakers: Shifting the Representation of Indigenous Women

Since the mid-twentieth century, visual narratives by women have made their mark on Mexican cinema receiving recognition for revealing lesser-known realities of Mexican society. Currently, new female filmmakers are emerging in unprecedented numbers, with increased confidence, experience, access to funds, and international accolades. Their representations of women’s challenging experiences in contemporary Mexico shed light on social worlds in which women’s everyday lives are marked by violence, inequality, and limited agency. In this study, special attention is paid to two emerging contemporary female film directors and their films, namely Tiempo de lluvia (In Times of Rain, 2018) by Itandehui Jansen and Nudo mixteco (2021) by Ángeles Cruz. Both films engage with theoretical debates on the decolonization of the indigenous Mexican social subject, a framework that serves as “a lens that enables us to see what is hidden from our understandings of both race and gender” (Lugones, 2010) and “where we are decolonizing from” (Chasi, 2021). The focus is on the recurrent themes of otherness, marginalization, gender violence, intersectionality, and female agency—or lack thereof.