Damián Alcázar

Gloria Fuentes (Gina Rodriguez) is a Latin-American makeup artist from Los Angeles who visits her best friend Suzu (Christina Rodlo) in Tijuana, Mexico. Her friend is entering the Miss Tijuana pageant. The two go to register, and the women there comments that she wouldn't think Gloria would enter. Suzu tries to tell her off, but Gloria ignores the comment. Later, the pair decides to go out to a night club. There, they spot the Chief of Police, who Suzu wants to impress to help her chances in the competition. When Gloria goes to the bathroom, gunmen who are part of a crime organization Las Estrellas, break into the bathroom through the vents. They pull Gloria out of her stall but ultimately give her time to escape while they gun down the place. She escapes, hitting her head, and tries to get hold of her friend, who she lost in the crossfire. She can't and the next morning asks a police officer to take her to the station so that she can find her friend. The police officer tells her he's "getting lunch" and gives her up to Las Estrellas. They take her to their headquarters where the boss Lino (Ismael Cruz Cordova) agrees to help her find Suzu if she agrees to work for them. She reluctantly agrees and is told to get into a car and park it on a corner. She does, and when she leaves the car and joins the men at the top of the hill, they blow up the building, revealed to be a DEA Safehouse containing three agents. Lino then sends Gloria to the Miss Tijuana pageant where she attempts an escape through the bathroom. She sees a white man and asks if he's American and could help her. He turns out to be a DEA agent and threatens her with years in prison if she doesn't help the DEA get to Las Estrellas. She begs to be let go, but they make her use a tracking chip in her phone and send her back. She goes back to Las Estrellas and is sent to San Diego with money and drugs attached to her car. The DEA is still tracking her. She arrives at the Border and is very scared that she will be discovered. She gets through without a problem and goes to the location in the GPS in San Diego, where she meets Jimmy (Anthony Mackie). He tells her to tell Lino that the DEA has a mole in his operation. Gloria leaves with another car full of weapons and gets through the border without issue. She gets in contact with the DEA, who she tells where she was told to come back to. A parking lot by a bull ring. They tell her there are two yellow doors she will be able to escape to once they can get to Lino. She gets to the bull ring, and the men in Las Estrellas get their weapons. However, the police show up with the DEA. Gloria makes a run for it, but when she realizes that there is no help beyond the yellow doors and that she has been played, is visibly upset. When Lino runs to get her and is shot in the leg, she realizes she has two choices. To run and be hunted or to help him and find her friend. She helps him, and he deems her trustworthy. The DEA agents are killed. They head to another safe house where Gloria meets Isabel (Aislinn Derbez). She was threatened into joining Las Estrellas and bears an e* tattoo, meaning she belongs to them. When Gloria hears that they will be checking phones, she transfers the chip the DEA gave her to another phone. Unknowingly, she puts it in Isabella's phone, and Lino kills her for being a mole. Gloria is distraught and the next morning yells at Lino. He wants to kill the chief of police, so he sends Gloria to Miss Tijuana and bribes the judges so that she will win since it's rumored the chief of police sleeps with every winner. She goes to the after party, where she agrees to meet the chief in another bedroom. She soon finds Suzu and tells her everything will be okay. However, when Suzu shows her the e* tattoo, she quickly realizes that Lino deceived her and that he had known where she was the whole time. In the room with the chief, she writes on a postcard that Lino is going to kill him. He quickly escapes outside, and Gloria goes to find Suzu. She does, and they head outside where Gloria shoots the chief of police but does not kill him. Lino arrives and kills him. Gloria points her gun at Lino, confessing she knows that he was aware of Suzu's whereabouts. He tries to bargain with her and then shoot her, but she shoots him first. This time fatally. The two women are arrested, and when Gloria is taken into an interrogation room, she finds Jimmy without tattoos. When he opens the door to get coffee, she sees that she is the Central Intelligence Agency. She quickly realizes that Jimmy was playing Lino and is an agent. He tells her that she could be very useful to the CIA and she agrees to help him if he drops all charges against her and Suzu. Gloria returns Suzu to her aunt and brother and goes back into the car with Jimmy. The final shot is of the car driving down the street.

In the devastated urban landscape of Mexico City, in the course of a day, the lives of a handful of characters intertwine. Malboro and Cucu, the starring characters, are two brothers who split after the older one, Malboro, went to prison five years. One day he is set free, willing to return to his life. Cucu is the younger brother, who has become a boxer with possible success, if only the beater he keeps somewhere inside, didn't arise in the worst moments. The relationship between the two brothers is somehow ambiguous, there's something unclear that caused Malboro's arrest. To complete the triangle is Uncle Jesus who has been like a father to them; a retired boxer who's always thinking about his past. Sara is Malboro's great love, a woman full of shame and resented after almost leaving her whole life behind to follow Malboro, but he failed in their attempt to run away because that same night, he got arrested by Rojas. Rojas is Sara's husband, a police officer who hates Malboro and will do anything to get him out of his way. The morning in which the story begins Malboro and Cucú visit their mother and make a promise to her. From this point, everything they'll do is is related to that promise. During this, they will run into several people, whose stories crash one into another, some of them lucky, others almost lethal. All the facts are leading to an end in where each character will recover their spot in the urban cosmos, once the sun rises once again. —ARGOS Cine

El Crimen Del Padre Amaro is a film based off the 19th century Portuguese novel O Crime do Padre Amaro, recreated with a modern touch. Although critics have scolded this movie for not precisely recreating the novel, director Carlos Carrera does a great job at bringing the novel into a modern context and highlighting issues to which current audiences around the world can relate. Carrera created a film that reaches international audiences by establishing a Hollywood texture with continuity editing and a smooth, polished finish. Yet by focusing the film on sociopolitical corruption and prevalent issues in Mexico, Carrera also catches the attention of the national audience. In a primarily Catholic country, the clear themes of corruption and hypocrisy within the Church resounded and created undisputable tensions throughout the nation, which even inspired the Church to advocate against viewing of the film. Padre Amaro serves as a symbol of hypocrisy in the context of Catholicism and the issues of the class system in Mexico. He begins as young priest inspired to do right under the laws of the Church; however, throughout the film he is continuously challenged by pressures of money, society, and issues of celibacy. This film consists of most indoor scenes creating a sense of discretion throughout the film, highlighting the theme of scandals, secrets, and hypocrisy. The film creates an impactful sense of realism of the difference in lifestyles and class systems. Poverty in rural towns is contrasted with the wealth of the church through the mise-en-scene as portrayed in costumes, barren houses in poor conditions, shots of the underdeveloped town in the country side, and amongst all of these there lies a beautiful and ornate church. While in most Latin American films the country side is portrayed as fostering a happy, rooted, soul-fulfilling lifestyle, Carlos Carrera shows the audience a realistic view of how rural life can contain the same corruption and scandals that are normally seen to take place in urban environments. All in all, this film does a terrific job at leaving the viewer with a clear message. Many distinct concepts can be pulled from this film, from corruption and injustice of politics and religious bodies, to personal struggles with human passions and the effects of society on a persons life.