This feisty Mexican comedy-drama, filmed in black and white on a micro-budget, is the debut feature from director Alonso Ruizpalacios. Mexican movie star Gael Garcia Bernal (who played Che Guevara in one of the WFC’s earliest features, Motorcycle Diaries) is associate producer. Ruizpalacios was born in 1978 and studied stage directing in Mexico City before moving to London where he trained as an actor at RADA. He writes and directs for both stage and screen and co-wrote Gueros (with Gibran Portela).

The film’s slang title refers to light-skinned/blond-haired Mexicans, a nickname that implies that “gueros” have an easier life than their less European-looking countrymen. Two brothers – one light-skinned, one dark-skinned – look for a folk singer, against the backdrop of the massive 1999 student demonstrations in Mexico City.

“‘Gueros’ isn’t making anything so grand as a statement … yet this modest little movie does seem to have its finger on the pulse” Peter Debruge, Variety

“best debut feature I’ve seen in the last year, best Mexican film in recent memory” Godfrey Cheshire, RogerEbert.com

“a gorgeous sound-and-vision journey through a mystical or mythical space that has echoes of the 1960s Paris of Godard and Truffaut and the 1980s New York of Jim Jarmusch” Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com

“‘Gueros’ is as close as we’ll get to a parody of art house films while being a proud member of them” Oktay Ege Kozak, The Playlist