Mexican actor Demián Bichir, known for his activism on immigration issues, is once again raising his voice on what he considers a pending debt of the United States: “A new amnesty and comprehensive immigration reform,” he says in an interview with EFE.
Bichir, who is back with Spanish-language projects with ‘El dentista’, a series that premieres on Vix on September 19, has consolidated his career as a key figure in the immigration debate and a constant voice in the fight for the rights of those living in an irregular situation.
Nominated for an Oscar for ‘Better Life’ in 2012, a film about the problems faced by a migrant father and son in the U.S., the Mexican actor recalls that he himself was undocumented at some point and is part of the beneficiaries of the last immigration amnesty implemented in 1986, during Ronald Reagan’s administration.
“I had just arrived in New York. I am the result of that amnesty and it was thanks to a Republican government,” says Bichir, who considers it essential that something similar happens again in the country currently led by Republican Donald Trump.
“Comprehensive immigration reform that not only gives a voice, a face and brings millions of human beings living in the United States out of the shadows and injects billions of dollars into the U.S. economy is essential. It should also serve to thank this community for all they do for American families,” he said.
In his view, part of U.S. society continues to believe in “misguided narratives” that immigrants milk the system.
“(They) inject billions of dollars in taxes without receiving much in return,” the actor assures.
“But there is one thing that is indisputable, there are millions of us, here we are and here we are going to stay, because we mean that much to the U.S. economy,” he adds.
Demián Bichir and ‘The Dentist’.
Bichir’s statements coincide with the upcoming premiere of ‘The Dentist’, the series he stars in and co-produces, inspired by the book ‘The Foreign Visitor’, by Chilean Julio Rojas.
The project was filmed in Mexico and follows a forensic dentist on the trail of Jack the Ripper.
The series was produced by Fábula, owned by brothers Pablo and Juan de Dios Larraín, in co-production with Movistar Plus+.
The last production Bichir did in Spanish was in 2020 with ‘Danyka’, but according to the 62-year-old actor, he had long wanted to find a story to tell in “his native language” and it was then that the Larrain family presented him with Rojas’ project.
“Julio is one of the great Latin American and contemporary writers. So I know this character (the dentist) of enormous dimensions, of great nuances, who is absolutely three-dimensional and is exactly what I was looking for,” he says.
Bichir plays Nolasco Black, a tormented forensic dentist who becomes involved in the investigation of a series of violent murders of women in Veracruz, Mexico.
Black “has specialized in France as a forensic doctor. He is a character who is still living a very important mourning in his life and seeks to atone for certain demons through erotic sexual experiences and also experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, he is a character with a lot of richness,” he says.
The story, set in the 19th century, also includes Camila Sodi, Dagoberto Gama, Ianis Guerrero and Claudia Ramírez in its cast.
Bichir concluded, according to Agencia EFE, that the series “has very important elements of an enormous erotic charge, but at the same time it is also a feminist series in more than one sense, because it is a series that talks about women’s rights that they have earned for a very long time, such as the right to study, to demonstrate as they wish or the right not to be raped”.
Find out more at ‘QueOnnda.com’.
