Berlin Golden Bear Winner Lila Avilés Wraps Production on ‘Cábula,’ Releases First Look Ahead of Venice Gap-Financing Market (EXCLUSIVE)

Berlin Golden Bear winner Lila Avilés (“Totém”) has wrapped production on her next feature film, “Cábula,” and shared an exclusive first-look image with Variety. The director will present the film during the Venice Gap-Financing Market, which takes place from Sept. 4 – 6.

Set in the fictional Mexican town of Mexicalpan, “Cábula” follows Toña, a dedicated and deeply compassionate teacher who is committed to nurturing her students’ creativity. When an invitation to represent their community takes Toña and her class to the capital, they encounter an absurd group of elites determined to appropriate and exploit their customs. But despite a series of challenges and betrayals, Toña reaffirms her calling and her belief in the transformative power of education.

Written by Avilés and Miguel Vasallo, “Cábula” is produced by Nicolás Celis (one of the producers of multi-Oscar winner “Roma”) for Cuadernos de Cine, the Mexico City-based shingle founded by Celis in 2008 and a sister company to production powerhouse Pimienta Films. It’s co-produced by Maria Zamora of Elastica Films and stars Teresita Sánchez, Gabriela Cartol and Montserrat Marañón.

The film marks Avilés’ long-awaited follow-up to “Totém,” which wowed audiences as well as the jurors at the 2023 Berlinale. Variety’s Peter Debruge praised the “intimate, emotionally rich” drama, singling out the director’s “generous, open-ended style” in what he described as a “multilayered follow-up to ‘The Chambermaid.’” That film, which marked Avilés’ auspicious debut, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2018, where it won the Ariel First Feature Film Award. 

According to a director’s statement provided to Variety, Avilés’ latest “uses comedy as resistance against a cruel, dehumanizing world… [and] explores humor as an escape valve and a collective mirror to question power, rebuilding the social fabric through vulnerability, tenderness and irreverence. At its heart is a tribute to education. In a country of minimal budgets, underpaid teachers become anonymous heroes.”

Utilizing a mix of seasoned professional actors and fresh local talents, “Cábula” stars Teresita Sánchez, the veteran Mexican actress who featured in both “The Chambermaid” and “Totém.” Speaking to Variety from Mexico City, Avilés referred to Sánchez as her “muse,” comparing her to Federico Fellini’s wife, Giulietta Messina. 

“She has that energy that can make you cry, can make you laugh,” said the director. “She’s a magic woman. She has that power.”

Avilés described Sánchez as a natural fit for the role of Toña, a woman whose “quiet, nurturing presence serves as an intimate moral counterweight to the surrounding chaos.”

“She’s a woman that hears, she’s a woman that sees, but most of all, she’s a woman that feels,” said the director. “She’s really connected to her students, to her vocation — her calling. She’s super enthusiastic. She wants to [create] a real transformation in her students.”

Avilés’ third feature builds on her already formidable catalog, twice representing Mexico in the Oscar race for best international feature film. Creatively, she said, all three films exist on a continuum, with one project leading naturally to the next.

“When I started to do ‘The Chambermaid,’ I already had ‘Totém’ in my heart. While I was doing ‘Totém,’ I knew I wanted to do ‘Cábula,’” she said. “Sometimes we have stories, and those stories go out [into the world]. It’s that persistence of stories that…are not in the mind, but in the heart.”

A former actress who directed theater before venturing into filmmaking, Avilés has been praised as part of the new wave of female directors shaping Mexican cinema. Celis echoed that, heralding the self-taught filmmaker as a “visionary.”

“It is a true privilege to team up with a visionary like Lila Avilés, especially at a time when championing such genuine auteur voices is so challenging,” said Celis. “After admiring the beautiful and intimate journey that was ‘Tótem,’ we are thrilled to begin our collaboration with ‘Cábula.’ The Venice Gap-Financing Market provides exactly the platform we need to gather the partners who will help bring her vision to life.”