With the Oscars approaching, Mexican talent will, again, shine on Hollywood’s biggest stage. Led by Guillermo del Toro, with nine nods for his movie “Frankenstein,” the Mexican contingent features José Antonio García, for sound on “One Battle After Another,” Ibel Hernández for visual effects in “Avatar: Fire and Water,” and Mexican-Americans Adrian Molina, for co-directing “Elio,” and Yvett Merino, for producing “Zootopia 2.” 

Though del Toro himself may have been snubbed for Best Director — an award he won a decade ago — nominations for “Frankenstein,” the third-most among films this year, are an outstanding achievement for an auteur at his peak. Yet, “Frankenstein” is an undeniably odd choice for a Mexican director. Like all of del Toro’s work over the last twenty years, it is an English-language movie, based on a European story, made by a Hollywood studio. It doesn’t get less Mexican than that. 

Still, del Toro, long the ultimate Hollywood insider, resolutely stands by the Mexicanness of his films; a sentiment shared by star Oscar Isaac, who plays Dr. Frankenstein and is Latino himself. “‘Frankenstein’ is this very European story, but told through a very Latin American, Mexican, Catholic point-of-view,” Isaac told Deadline. Del Toro is often blunter: “When people say, ‘What is Mexican about your movies?’ I say ‘me.’”

While del Toro and his movies are celebrated throughout Mexico, the question — and his response — speak to a bigger tension at play. This is about Mexico’s influence on Hollywood: how Mexican directors, producers and cinematographers are embedded in Los Angeles, and are changing the very grammar of American filmmaking from within; and the state of Mexican cinema from afar.  

The ‘Tres Amigos’

That Mexico could change Hollywood was entirely improbable. 

When Guillermo del Toro began his career, Mexico’s film industry was a long way from its Golden Age. By the late 1980s, Mexican cinema had cratered: production had collapsed and the national film archive had recently burned down; what remained was mostly ficheras — campy sex comedies — and narco films.  

With something like 10 Mexican features per year, del Toro was clawing his way into an industry that barely existed. Around this time, he met two others — Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu — in the same predicament. Realizing, as Mexican director Álvaro Curiel says, that “Mexico could not provide them with any opportunity,” the “Tres Amigos” soon left for Hollywood. 

Cuarón went first and del Toro soon followed. Iñárritu arrived last, catapulted by “Amores Perros” — a film he finished, legend has it, only after Cuarón helped him re-cut it, on the recommendation of their mutual friend, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki.

By the 2000s, the “Tres Amigos” were all helming big-budget studio features — del Toro had landed “Hellboy” (2004), Cuarón, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2006), while Iñárritu had “21 Grams” (2003) and Oscar-nominated “Babel” (2006). Beyond Lubezki, they came with the best of their generation — Oscar winners Rodrigo Prieto, Guillermo Arriaga and Eugenio Caballero, among others.   

Conquering Hollywood

What happened next was unprecedented.

Between 2014 and 2018, the “Tres Amigos” won four of five Best Director Oscars: Cuarón for “Gravity,” Iñárritu back-to-back for “Birdman” and “The Revenant,” and del Toro for “The Shape of Water.” Meanwhile, Lubezki — the “fourth Amigo” — won three consecutive Best Cinematography Oscars, something nobody had ever done. And then came “Roma” (2019): Cuarón’s black-and-white, Spanish-and-Mixtec-language memoir of his Mexico City childhood, which became the first Latin American film ever nominated for Best Picture, and won him his second directing Oscar. 

The dominance was so total that it obscured how unusual the arrangement really was. These were Mexican filmmakers, trained in Mexico, bonded by their Mexican sensibility — yet almost everything they made, and won for, was in English. The exception, “Roma,” was so unique — a big-budget production as much about Netflix’s Hollywood arrival as Cuarón’s directorial homecoming and his childhood — that it proved the rule; to win creative freedom, Mexican filmmakers had to first work in English. 

In Mexico, where cultural critics have long asked whether the “Tres Amigos” represent a triumph or a brain drain, the pattern raised uncomfortable questions. Were they Mexico’s greatest cultural ambassadors or Hollywood’s most talented recruits?

The debate remains unresolved. 

Critic Saúl Arellano Montoro was philosophical about it: “Hollywood is a global village, and they already belong to it.” Their films may not represent Mexican cinema, but they represent what a Mexican filmmaker can say beyond Mexico’s borders. Other critics were less sanguine: some praised their technical mastery; others dismissed the Hollywood output as “gringo cinema” — commercial work that erased national identity. 

At the heart of this debate is Nestor García Canclini’s question, posed presciently in 1993. Can Latin American cinema continue as a space for national cultural identity, or would globalization dissolve it completely? 

For 30 years, Mexico’s answer seemed painfully clear. And then came … 

A disaster named Emilia

“Emilia Pérez,” Netflix’s French-directed musical about a transitioning Mexican cartel boss, arrived at the 2025 Oscars with 13 nominations — the most ever for a non-English film. It left with 11 losses, tying the record for most defeats.

The disastrous campaign underscored the tension within Hollywood’s global village; director Jacques Audiard openly admitted he hadn’t done much research on Mexico (or the Mexican accent). Set within the backdrop of the cartel violence that critics and victims described as wildly misrepresented, thousands petitioned to block the Mexican release of “Emilia Pérez.” When it opened anyway, thousands more demanded refunds, forcing Mexico’s federal consumer protection agency, Profeco, to intervene.

In Mexico, “Emilia Pérez” wasn’t just a flop — it was wholly rejected as deeply disrespectful. When critic Ana Iribe wrote, “We don’t want a white French director to portray the violence we have to face every day,” she spoke for Mexicans everywhere confronted by the gross appropriations and mischaracterizations of today’s global Hollywood. 

The outcry ultimately reached the Oscars. When Zoë Saldaña won Best Supporting Actress for the film, she used the moment to address the backlash directly: “I’m very, very sorry that you and so many Mexicans felt offended. That was never our intention.” Then she added that “the heart of this movie was not Mexico” — a statement that, for many Mexicans, proved the point entirely.

A new chapter for Mexican Cinema

The “Emilia Pérez” debacle drew a line in Hollywood. Mexico’s cultural influence had evolved into something with real authority: Hollywood could no longer use Mexico as a backdrop, borrow its pain and tell its stories without Mexican authorship. The era of Hollywood’s yellow-tinted “Mexico” — the stereotypical sepia filter of “Traffic” and “Sicario” — was over, not because Hollywood decided, but because Mexico did. 

Whether the “Tres Amigos” contributed to this change-from-within triumph or were just a generational brain drain, the reality is that the Mexican film industry is now booming. One year after the premiere of “Emilia Pérez,” and six years after the success of “Roma,” Netflix committed US $1 billion over four years to Mexican productions, plus upgrades to Mexico City’s historic Churubusco Studios and a huge expansion of their Latin American corporate headquarters. It was, by any measure, the largest foreign investment in Mexican cinema history.     

As Hollywood localizes — setting up shop in creative cities around the world — Mexico City, in particular, is primed for more success. With pre-existing infrastructure, film-friendly incentives, and a deep pool of talent, Mexico City is more than a cheap backlot for now-unaffordable Los Angeles shoots; it is an undisputed creative destination for the vast Spanish-speaking world. 

The Mexican audiovisual industry now contributes US $3 billion annually to the national economy. Central to this growth is the new generation of Mexican filmmakers who are choosing to stay in Mexico. From Tatiana Huezo and Fernanda Valadez to Michel Franco and Fernando Frías, top Mexican talent today is primarily working at home, in Spanish, with stories that are unmistakably Mexican. Franco, who won prizes at Cannes, has been blunt about it: “I am convinced there is no place where I can make better films than Mexico.” Whereas Cuarón, del Toro and Iñárritu had to leave for Hollywood, their “kids,” as Amazon Head of Mexican Originals Alonso Aguilar calls them, are proving that Hollywood, increasingly, will come to them. 

On March 15, the 98th Academy Awards will air to what may be among its smallest audiences ever. With U.S. viewership (the only viewership stat released) cratering from 55 million to under 20 million in barely two decades, the Oscars — and, by extension, Hollywood — may be more irrelevant than ever. Rather than serving as the singular gatekeeper of global cinema, today, the Oscars are one stage among many.  

For many Mexicans — and millions more around the world — that is precisely the point. Mexican cinema now speaks for itself, without Hollywood’s sepia filter, in its own languages, and on its own terms. 

Logan J Gardner formerly worked for Netflix Original Film in Content Strategy and Analysis. Today, he is a Mexico City-based content strategist, writer, photographer and filmmaker. Sign up to receive his newsletter, Half-Baked, peruse his blog or follow him on Instagram for more.