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Newcomers Triumph at Prestigious Morelia Film Festival
18 Oct
Summary
- Environmental thriller "The Reserve" wins Best Feature, Director, and Actress
- Debut film "The Devil Smokes" wins Best Screenplay
- Over 100 films competed at the 23rd edition of the festival
The 23rd Morelia Film Festival, which took place from October 10 to 19, 2025, has been hailed as a triumph for newcomers and emerging filmmakers. The festival's top prizes were dominated by first-time directors, with the environmental thriller "The Reserve" by Pablo Pérez Lombardini taking home the awards for Best Feature, Best Director, and Best Actress for Carolina Guzmán.
Pérez Lombardini's debut feature, which first caught attention at last year's Ventana Sur, is based on real-life testimonies from environmental defenders and follows a forest ranger's fight to protect her remote village's forest. The film, shot with non-professional actors in a rural community in Chiapas, captures the urgent struggle faced by conservationists across Latin America.
Alongside "The Reserve," the festival also recognized other promising newcomers. The Best Screenplay Ojo award went to Karen Plata for her work on the childhood survival story "The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box)" by first-time director Ernesto Martínez Bucio, who also won the Best First Feature Award at the Berlinale's Perspectives strand.
