Nothing sharpens the mind like working within constraints. Made on a shoestring production grant of €200,000 ($234,000) and given three weeks to write a screenplay and outline a production schedule, ‘Tijuana, Todavía’ by Mexico’s Gabriel Gutiérrez Morales has been rewarded with a slot at the 83rd Venice Film Festival where it vies for the Queer Lion.
All in all, Gutiérrez Morales and his producer-lead Humberto Busto (“Amores Perros”) were given 10 months to develop, write, produce, shoot and complete the film by the Biennale College – Cinema, which backed it as part of its annual training program. “Not even the smallest films in Mexico are made with a budget that tiny but at the same time, all those restrictions made it a very joyful experience,” said Busto.
Not unlike David Pablo’s Queer Lion and Horizons winner last year, which represents Mexico at the 2027 Oscars, “Tijuana, Todavía” (translated to “Still, Tijuana”) takes place in northern Mexico, specifically the titular border town of Tijuana.
“Tijuana, Todavía” follows the fraught relationship between Maksim, a young queer man who has fled Russia to avoid being drafted into the war with Ukraine, and Chava, a middle-aged gay man grappling with the culture of Northern Mexican machismo.
