Coproduction and Transnationalism: National Cinema in a Global Market

Abstract

In a 2008 interview with Univision journalist Jorge Ramos, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro states, “I’ve always made foreign cinema, weird [cinema] … I’ve always made very, very weird cinema … but yes, I do wish I had made more Mexican cinema.”¹ The filmmaker identifies with the character Hellboy as being “from two worlds but not accepted by either.” Cronos, del Toro’s first film and the most rooted in his homeland, was a coproduction with the United States set on the US–Mexico border and starring Argentine actor Federico Luppi. Beyond its geography, the location of the film’s narrative content—a sci-fi/horror film about a mechanical beetle that exchanges blood for a rejuvenation serum, at the cost of giving its user vampire-like cravings—was marginal to the official national image that CONACULTA was beginning to export. According to del Toro, the film was criticized by high officials in IMCINE and went “without official backing” to Cannes in 1992; there it garnered international clout by winning the Critics’ Week award. He explains that despite the success of Cronos, his next Spanish-language project, El espinazo del diablo, was rejected when it sought state funding. Thus, the filmmaker feels his migratory status was thrust upon him, being unaccepted within his home industry while given various opportunities abroad.