Mexico's Guadalajara International Film Festival is marking its 40th year with FICG Goes to Berlin, a showcase of standout titles at Berlin's Kino Babylon from January 30 to February 8, 2026. The event highlights recent Mexican cinema, including documentaries and features from the festival's 2024 and 2025 editions. Directed by Estrella Araiza since 2019, the festival drew 289,777 attendees in 2025.
Launched in 1986, the Guadalajara International Film Festival, or FICG, has grown into one of Latin America's largest, focusing on films from Mexico, the rest of the region, Spain, and Portugal. Based in Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro's hometown, it survived funding challenges and the COVID-19 pandemic to reach this milestone. The 2025 edition attracted 289,777 participants across all activities and welcomed 1,473 industry professionals for events like the 22nd Co-Production Meeting, the 20th Guadalajara Construye post-production showcase, Episodio Cero for TV, DocuLab, Pitch Guadalajara, Talents Guadalajara, a Talent Project Market, and FICGames Playtest. The upcoming 2026 festival is set for April 17-25.
FICG Goes to Berlin features 18 fiction films and nine documentaries, emphasizing new voices in Mexican cinema. Among the highlights is Santiago Maza's "State of Silence," produced by Diego Luna, which world-premiered at Tribeca and was acquired by Netflix for North and Latin America. The documentary follows four journalists confronting Mexico's narco-politics, with Maza noting its "fast-paced interviews" aim at "ennobling the extraordinary courage of journalists portrayed."
Other notable entries include José Manuel Cravioto's "Rock, Weeds and Rocanrol," a 1970s mockumentary about an underground car race turning into Mexico's Woodstock, drawing 150,000 attendees amid government crackdowns on rock music. Urzula Barba Hopfner's "Corina," a dramedy likened to a Mexican "Amélie," won the 2025 SXSW Audience Award and earned eight Ariel Award nominations. Ernesto González Díaz's "Concert for Other Hands," a father-son documentary, received the 2025 Mexican Cinema Journalists' best documentary award; pianist José Luis reflects, "It’s what every father desires – for your tastes, passions to be shared by a son."
Debut features like Sofia Gomez Cordova's "After," exploring motherhood and sexuality, and Pierre Saint-Martin's "We Shall Not Be Moved," Mexico's 2026 Oscar entry about the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, underscore the festival's role in promoting social themes and family bonds. Alfredo Pourailly's "The Fabulous Gold Harvesting Machine" highlights father-son love, with Pourailly saying, "I was keen to highlight the love between father and son with the hope that their story would reflect our own aspirations."
This showcase at the historic Kino Babylon, opened in 1929, positions FICG as a year-round driver of culture and business in Latin American cinema.
