‘La Jaula De Oro’ Director Says US Latino Hollywood Distributor Turned Down Idea As ‘Not The Kind Of Films We Do’

Diego Quemada Díez, the Spanish director of “La jaula de oro” (“The Golden Dream), the film about Central American and southern Mexican teenagers who brave fantastic dangers in an attempt to reach the United States aboard the cargo trains known as “la Bestia,” has been drowning in accolades for his work since it came out in 2013. Most recently, “La jaula … ” cleaned up at this week’s Arieles in Mexico, netting nine awards, including for best motion picture. But during the film’s production, not everyone was always so convinced that the subject matter would draw audiences.

Least of all within the United States: Quemada Díez told Reforma on Thursday that Pantelion films, the first Hollywood studio for movies aimed at Latino audiences, had turned down his movie. “They told us no,” he said, “because it’s not the kind of movies they do. But they should have a responsibility. Hopefully they’ll think about it, say, ‘let’s leave the door open on it.'” The film, whose cast does not include any actors who had worked professionally, poses a grittier and more politically inconvenient alternative to the only Pantelion film dealing with immigration, a biopic on labor leader Cesar Chavez.

That film skirted current immigration debates and thornier aspects of Chavez’s history in favor of iconizing, with plenty of airbrushing of the leader’s legacy. Quemada Díez wanted to cause discomfort. “The average American needs to see this film …there’s brutal racism against Mexicans and Central Americans,” he said. The director later told MVS Radio, “What I wanted to do was talk about migration as an economic problem, question the walling-up and militarization of borders in Europe and the United States, the criminalization of migrants, the incarceration of migrants.”