Since 2006, fifty thousand people have died in Mexico’s drug wars. For Gerardo Naranjo, writer and director of the best foreign film Oscar-nominated Miss Bala, there are no good or bad guys in this war, only victims. It is the bad luck of a supremely gorgeous beauty queen (played by Stephanie Sigman in her first film role) to get caught in the middle. The sober film doesn’t need much dialogue to convey the fear and despair of Mexicans in the face of a situation with no end in sight. Instead, the expressions say it all, including those of the drug lords, diffident and almost modest, at the other end of the spectrum from Scarface. But the laid-back gangsters should not lull us into a false sense of security. These are the guys who bullet-spray perceived enemies, who routinely dump cut heads in cities from Cuernavaca near Mexico City to the West Coast. Playing it safe, until the fallout from the film fades, Naranjo has relocated to Brooklyn with his family, though he hopes to travel to Los Angeles come Oscar time.

Miss Bala is Mexico’s entry for Best Foreign film at this year’s Academy Awards.

View the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrTyAbgjF04