Diego Luna will present Santiago Maza’s State of Silence, a portrait of the extreme violence against Mexican journalists, at SEMINCI

The actor and producer will attend the premiere of the documentary in Valladolid, in a special session that will include a talk with the writer Ray Loriga.

State of silence, a feature film directed by Santiago Maza, will have its Spanish premiere at the Valladolid International Film Festival on 22 October, in a special screening that will include a discussion with the director himself and the film’s executive producer, actor Diego Luna, moderated by the writer Ray Loriga.

This film shows the work of four Mexican journalists and the risks they run when working as journalists in their country, given that journalism has been a high-risk profession in Mexico for years. According to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 141 journalists and other media personnel have been killed since the turn of the century, and at least 61 of these murders were directly related to their work. Moreover, according to CPJ’s annual Global Impunity Index, Mexico consistently ranks among the 10 countries with the highest number of journalist murders that remain unsolved.

State of Silence gives voice to four journalists who have become targets of repression in their quest to reveal the pain and fear suffered by Mexico’s citizens after two decades of violence unleashed by the so-called war on drugs. Like hundreds of their colleagues, they are both researchers and victims of narco-politics. This intimate portrait urgently demands for press freedom not to remain under siege. Diego Luna points out his commitment to the project stating that ‘if cinema does not function as a mirror, as a reflection, and does not connect with the deepest part of our life in community, it has no meaning. It exists for that reason and for that purpose, that’s how I learned to see it and that’s how I learned to make it’.

Actor, screenwriter, producer and director, Diego Luna is one of the most well-known figures in Mexican cinema around the world, with an extensive filmography that has spanned Mexico, Spain and the United States. Luna, a founding partner with fellow actor Gael García Bernal of the production company La Corriente del Golfo, emphasised that, ‘without a doubt, Valladolid represents a great platform to see and discuss the film. Santiago Maza and I are very grateful to the festival for the invitation. We are very happy to be able to share the documentary State of Silence with the Spanish public. Freedom of the press and the right of every citizen to be informed is under constant threat and is an issue that knows no borders. See you there soon.”

Luna has appeared in films such as Y tu mamá también (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001 – Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Actor at the Venice Film Festival), Milk (Gus van Sant, 2008), Solo quiero caminar (Agustín Díaz Yanes, 2008 -nominated for the Goya Award for Best Actor) and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Gareth Edwards, 2016), as well as series such as Narcos (Netflix, 2018-2021) and Andor (Disney+, 2022). As a director, he debuted with the documentary J.C. Chávez (2007), dedicated to the legendary boxer Julio César Chávez, followed by the feature film Abel (2010), which he also wrote and for which he received the Ariel Award that year. He is also the creator and director of series such as Pan y circo, which won two Daytime Emmy Awards, and Todo va a estar bien.

La Corriente del Golfo, a Mexico-based production company, focuses on films, series and podcasts. Among other projects, the production company has developed the feature films Chicuarotes, directed by Gael García Bernal and premiered at the Cannes Film Festival; Cassandro, starring Gael García Bernal; Tesis sobre una domesticación, directed by Javier Van de Couter and starring Camila Sosa Villada and Alfonso Herrera. The Mexican actors have also produced the series Aquí en la Tierra, starring García Bernal and Kyzza Terrazas; the web series El tema, directed by Santiago Maza; and La máquina, starring Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna and Eiza González and directed by Gabriel Ripstein.

Santiago Maza, trained at the British National Film and Television School and the London Film School, is head of the documentary department at La Corriente del Golfo. Maza was selected for the Berlinale Talent Campus and his first feature film, Truenos de San Juan, has been screened at more than fifteen international festivals. He co-directed the series Duda razonable (Netflix) as well as two seasons of El Tema, a documentary series presented by Gael García Bernal.