At the age of 15, Luis read the book by the Mexican writer, he was even able to meet the Guanajuato native himself thanks to his father, J.Osé Estrada filmed Kill the Lion in 1976. From there, he knew that one of his goals as a future filmmaker was to bring to the screen one of his favorite works of his. Ibargüengoitia.
“For me he is my favorite writer not only in Mexico but in the world. Throughout my career; Several times I tried to at least obtain the rights to make it, but for some reason or another the rights were not available and after fighting Paco (Ramos, Vice President of content at Netflix) and I, then reconcile and now be the greatest friends, partners and accomplices of this project, this is being achieved,” Luis stated at a press conference.
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Las Muertas tells the story of the sisters María del Jesús and Delfina González Valenzuela, better known as The Poquianchisconsidered the worst serial killers in history.
The project will feature the performances of Paulina Gaitán and Arcelia Ramírez in the main roles, being the Valenzuela sisters, but in fiction they will be known as Serafina and Arcangela Baladro, respectively. The cast is completed by Joaquín Cosío, in the character of Captain Bedoya and Alfonso Herrera as Simón Corona.
“The author had access to the trial file of The Poquianchis and, after his investigation, he realized that they were indeed daughters of the fuck, madrotas, bastards, murderers, pimps, but that the truth was not what the media told. Some of the events narrated are real, but the characters are imaginary.
“Which In reality, what he did was basically write a script and today this dream comes true to bring it to the screen,” commented Luis, who is making his debut as a director of a series.
There will be a total of six chapterslasting approximately between 60 and 80 minutes. From the perspective of the filmmaker known for works such as ¡Que viva México! (2023) and The Law of Herod (1999), for him this project is more like a saga of films, since he is still reluctant to accept that he is making a contemporary series.
The recordings began this Monday in the Studies Churubusco in Mexico City and will have as locations some towns in San Luis Potosi, Guanajuato and Veracruz.
Although the story takes place in the sixties, Luis Estrada accepts that there are issues that are still validas in the case of femicideshe sexism, violence to women, among others. Therefore, his greatest challenge is to tell everything mixing it with black humor and satire.
“I have spent an entire career trying to understand how black humor and satire work, and all my previous films have been a way of preparing myself.” to address this humor that is so difficult, so complicated, risky because laughing at madrotas who sell and buy girls aged 13-15, then torture them and die, is a complex challengebut as perfectly established in the novel, that is what this series of films aspires to.
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“The essential trait and characteristic of satire is that you are not afraid to address complex, sad, serious, painful topics with humor.. I have always moved into satire and black humor because I am interested in talking about my country, about my reality, which is more painful than we would all like, and what we try to do in the adaptation is, once again, confront the Mexican public with their country and discovering that we have not changed that much,” said the filmmaker.
Las Muertas will be released soon as part of the original content offered by the platform Netflix.