When Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco shot ‘Dreams’ in 2023, the immigration raids that his new film reflects were not part of the international news. Now, in the midst of Donald Trump’s term in office, this offensive has gained weight, but only exacerbates a reality that in his opinion has always existed.
“A politician like Trump needs to benefit from generating fear and it’s very sad, it’s very unfair, but I wrote the film years ago. I had it in mind for many years because that has always been the reality, although now the discourse is more frontal,” he tells EFE about the U.S. Republican leader.
Franco (Mexico City, 1979) is in Madrid to present this film that competed at the Berlinale 2025, which will be released on June 19 in Spain and which brings together on the big screen the Oscar-winning Jessica Chastain with dancer Isaac Hernandez, who debuts as a protagonist.
The relationship between a wealthy philanthropist and a Mexican dancer who has crossed irregularly into the United States to gamble on this doomed love portrays both the complex power play between the two and, more generally, that which links Mexico and the United States.
The scenario the director depicts in ‘Dreams’, he says, “falls short compared to what is happening now”. In the U.S., he adds, there is a double standard with Mexicans, migrants from Central America and from all over the world who go there to work.
Michel Franco sets the record straight in his film ‘Dreams’.
“They allow them and use them, but when you have to be fair with them they operate as if they don’t owe them anything,” stresses the author of films such as ‘After Lucia’ (2012), ‘The Daughters of April’ (2017) or ‘Memory’ (2023), the latter also with Chastain.
The American dream that drives the character in his latest film to risk his physical integrity by illegally crossing the border maintains its appeal despite the reality present in U.S. territory.
“What happens is that people flee from worse realities. In other words, although the idea of the American dream may sound anachronistic, the reality is that in Mexico, for example, people are fleeing poverty, misery and drug trafficking,” says the filmmaker.
For Franco, “all cinema is political”, “all our actions are political”, “but films should not be so simple that they can be used as propaganda or have a very clear and obvious political intention”.
“Many are like that, but those age very poorly and don’t get to have cinematic depth or real impact. I think cinema goes much deeper,” he says.
He says he has never censored himself and hopes he will never have to do so. His films have been screened at festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice and San Sebastian, which have also given space to works by other great Mexican filmmakers, such as Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro.
“Mexico is a country of great contrasts, with undeniable cultural and historical richness, and also with social inequality and the violence that this generates in an enormous way. The great border with the U.S. and the size of our economy, all this mixture of things that work and things that don’t are the vehicle for many films, some that seek to be commercial and others that seek to be interesting, generate so many interesting voices,” he concludes about the cinematographic strength of his country, reported Agencia EFE.
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