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The 16th Edition of the Ambulante Documentary Tour Presented at the 19th FICM

Gabriela Martínez @Gabmartivel

In the presence of founder and general director of the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), Daniela Michel, and the vice president of the festival, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Batel, the press conference for the 16th edition of the Ambulante Documentary Tour, which will take place from November 3 to December 5, was held.

“For 16 years, Ambulante has walked hand in hand with FICM. It will always be a very important space,” Cárdenas Batel declared at the beginning of the press conference, taking the opportunity to invite attendees to the special surprise screening that will take place on Friday, October 29, at 5:00 p.m.

Also in attendance were Roxana Alejo, Ambulante Operational Director; Meghan Monsour, Director of Programming at Ambulante; María Novaro, General Director of the Mexican Institute of Cinematography (IMCINE); José Miguel Álvarez, IMCINE's Technical Coordinator; and the directors Teresa Camou and Rosalva López, currently in competition at FICM.

Actor and director Diego Luna, co-founder of Ambulante along with Gael García Bernal, attended the conference virtually and thanked all FICM allies. He also celebrated the festival's return, "that we reclaim the opportunity for filmmakers to meet." He recalled the beginnings of Ambulante: “It has become a space to learn and use tools to tell stories and create new narratives. We come from a year in which, thanks to technology, Ambulante began to occupy spaces that it did not have before. Ambulante will continue to grow,” he added.

Luna also congratulated Ambulante más allá on 10 years of existence, during which it has helped train 195 filmmakers throughout Mexico and Latin America.

In addition, Maria Novaro highlighted the importance of having spaces such as FICM, Ambulante and Ambulante más allá, since, in her words, they have been part of the growth of the film industry over recent years. The Director of IMCINE recalled how difficult it was to be a filmmaker in the nineties, and how film production has grown more now than during the so-called Golden Age of Mexican Cinema.

The programming for the 16th Ambulante Documentary Tour will be made up of 47 films revolving around the theme, “Ecologies of Cinema”, and will take up situations such as the climate crisis displacing people and the negative effects of extractivism.

For more information, visit ambulante.org.