10 (Mostly) Mexican Films and Shows to Stream Right Now

Y Tu Mama Tambien. Almost 20 years before Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma won Best Picture, he released another classic that is considered one of the greatest films in Mexican history. As Lucia enters a mid-life crisis, she crosses paths with two teenagers, Tenoch and Julio, and follows them on an epic road trip from Mexico City to a remote beach in Oaxaca. What the two boys initially think is the erotic vacation of their dreams unravels as their friendship and fragile masculinity strain under newly revealed secrets and Lucia’s complex influence. It’s easy to get lost in the movie’s sexual provocativeness, but don’t let this obscure the film’s portrait of a changing Mexican society at the turn of the century and the society’s tensions between the traditional and modern, the pubescent and sexually liberated, the indigenous and Euro-centric, and the fresa y naco, all along the backdrop of the beautiful Oaxacan people and landscape.

Released: 2001
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Available on Netflix.

Casa de Los Flores. “No se pierda la virginidad, se gana la sexualidad.” This phrase defines the hopeful adolescence of Virginia de la Mora who we see in flashbacks to the past throughout this show’s final season. We were sad to see the original Virginia (played by Veronica Castro) go after the first season, but we could not have asked for a better young Virginia with actress Isabel Burr. Season 3 finishes with a bang and concludes perhaps the most progressive “novela” ever made, exploring issues like genderfluidity and homosexuality that remain taboo in much of traditional Mexican society.

Season 3 Released April 2020.
Created by: Manolo Caro
Available on Netflix.

Pajaros de Verano (Birds of Passage). The movie is an epic story of the rise and fall of the Wayuu people of the Guajira region of northeast Colombia and bordering northwest Venezuela. Teenaged Zaida (played by Colombian star Natalia Reyes) has just completed a rite of passage to become a woman when Rapayet asks her mother Ursula for her hand in marriage. Skeptical of Rapayet’s low family reputation, Ursula demands a high dowry. Rapayet makes a living from trading bootleg products across the Guajira with his friend Moises, the latter a non-indigenous Colombian who is distrusted by the Wayuu. During one of their work routes', Rapayet and Moises overhear American Peace Corps volunteers asking a bartender for a weed hookup. With the help of a distant Wayuu relative Anibal, Rapayet begins supplying large quantities of marijuana to Americans for export to the United States. Rapayet’s marriage to Zaida is only the beginning of a true-story rollercoaster ride for the Wayuu, who are rapidly drawn into the growing Colombian drug trade of the 1960’s and 70’s. Their financial success from selling marijuana strains their traditions, causes tribal conflict, and changes their society forever.

Released: 2018
Director: Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra
Available on HBO through Amazon Prime streaming here.

Museo. Also based on a true story, Museo is set in 1985 Mexico City and follows the infamous heist of the National Museum of Anthropology in which two men stole over 140 ancient artifacts. The heist was so bold and substantial that Mexican authorities believed it to be the work of a sophisticated international criminal
organization. Instead, it was carried out by two young students, the mastermind played by Gael Bernal. The movie recreates the heist and the several months that followed when the perpetrators struggle to find a place for the priceless artifacts. Aside from the remarkable history, the movie provides rich insights about cultural appropriation that are as relevant today as ever.

Released: 2018
Director: Alfonso Ruizpalacios.
Available as a Youtube Original here.

Este No Es Berlin (This is Not Berlin). Set in Mexico City around the same time as Museo, Este No Es Berlin is a wild coming-of-age story of a teenage boy who discovers an exclusive underground nightclub called La Azteca that his edgy musician sister plays at. After Carlos meets seductive Nico and his eccentric artist friends, he embarks on a journey of drugs, sexual liberation, and self discovery, all set within
the context of significant political unrest and the AIDS epidemic.

Released: 2019
Director: Hari Sama
Available on Amazon Prime here.

Dos Veces Tu. This erotic psychological thriller kicks off after two cousins exchange their husbands at a wedding as a prank. After a night of drinking, they race home, each car holding one of the mismatched couples. One car crashes, killing the mismatched couple within. Things take a strange turn for the other mismatched couple as they cope with the loss of their spouses. The movie is set against the wealthy Polanco district’s Jewish community, an influential group in Mexico City that is relatively unknown outside the city.

"A visually striking, emotionally brutal exploration that doesn't look or feel like anything else in 2019 cinemas."
-Glenn Kenny (film critic, RogerEbert.com).

Released: 2020
Director: Salomon Askenazi
Available on Vimeo here.

El Ciudadano Ilustre. Daniel Mantovani is a successful author who is living a comfortable life in Spain in the years after receiving a Nobel Prize in Literature. When he is invited by his small Argentinian hometown to be honored for his literary accomplishments, he decides to return for the first time in decades. After a warm reception, he grows entangled with past lovers, hang-ups, and local artists who scoff at what they perceive as Euro-centric condescension. These tensions escalate to a breaking point in this dark comedy that should not to be missed.

Released: 2016.
Director: Gaston Duprat; Mariano Cohn.
Available on Netflix.

Tambien la Lluvia. A Spanish film crew travels to Cochabamba, Bolivia to film a movie about Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America. When a crewmember asks why they are using Bolivian natives to portray Tainos from Hispaniola, the director dismisses the question by answering that all Indians are the same. When they arrive, there is growing civil unrest between the natives and an international water company that is asserting control over the area’s natural resources. Past mixes with present as the local actors who play natives fighting a Spanish invasion also attend violent protests against the water conglomerate. This movie is an amazing exploration of the enduring impact of colonialism and foreign influence across the Americas.

Released: 2010.
Director: Iciar Bollain.
Available on Netflix.

Genetefied. This show is a rich picture of the gentrification and cultural changes currently experienced
by the historically Latino Boyle Heights neighborhood in East Los Angeles. A family struggles to keep their taqueria afloat as rents skyrocket in the neighborhood. The family’s patriarch “Pop,” is an old-school undocumented Mexican who is reluctantly willing to do whatever it takes to save the business, including following suggestions by his grandson Chris who wants to “modernize” the restaurant to make it more palatable to gringo hipsters. The show highlights the complexity of today’s Latinx demographic that is often
over-generalized in the media. We see this type of generational conflict when young lesbian artist Ana paints a large mural of two lucha libre men kissing on the wall of a mom-and-pop store, triggering praise from younger allies but scorn from traditional Latinos in the community.

Released: Season 1 aired in 2020.
Created by: Marvin Bryan Lemus
Available on Netflix.

Vida. With subject matter that significantly overlaps with Gentefied, Vida follows the story of two sisters
who come back to their childhood neighborhood Boyle Heights when their mother Vida dies. Lyn, played by Melissa Barrera (also the lead in Dos Veces Tu) is a carefree girl living off credit cards and rich boyfriends in San Francisco. Her sister Emma (played by Mishel Prada) is a cold-hearted business woman living in Chicago who thought she had put her West Coast childhood behind her. After their mother’s funeral, the sisters not only discover significant financial problems with their mother’s bar but also find out about their mother’s wife
Eddy (who is also named in their mother’s will). These issues keep them in Los Angeles for way longer than they expected as they figure out what to do with Vida’s Bar. We are about to find out how true they stay to la raza in the final season that just kicked off in April.

Released: Season 3 Began Airing in April.
Created by: Tanya Saracho
Available on Starz through Amazon Prime here.