Mexican films for the Middle East

Film producers in town to look at possibility of screening Mexican films in local cinemas

Dubai: The spotlight at this year’s Dubai International Film Festival In Focus panel discussion may have been on Mexican cinema, but the emphasis was really on strengthening ties with the Middle East.

“We want to meet people who we can enter into dialogue with to look at what opportunities there are for us in this region,” said panelist Cristina Prado of the Mexican Film Institute. “We have sales in this region and we have rights with the television. But we’d like to speak to anyone about whether they’d be interested in getting copyrights in order to show Mexican films in the cinema here. How films are distributed in the cinema here? They are all things we’d like to understand more about.”

Moctesuma Esparza aims to bring more movie screens to Latino audiences

The veteran producer, whose credits include ‘The Milagro Beanfield War’ and ‘Selena,’ talks about his film company, Maya Entertainment, and his plans for building a nationwide movie theater chain.
On the walls of his office on the second floor of the Los Angeles Center Studios, veteran filmmaker and Latino activist Moctesuma Esparza displays posters from some of the dozens of movies and TV series he has produced in his career.