New York-based Mexican cinematographer Alejandro Mejía was awarded with the Golden Frog for Best Docudrama for his work in Rodrigo Reyes’ 499 at the world’s top cinematography event, the 28th edition of the EnergaCamerimage Film Festival in Poland. The festival is dedicated to the celebration of cinematography and recognition of its creators, cinematographers.
To commemorate the historical occasion of the 500-year anniversary of the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 2021, director Reyes offers a provocative hybrid-cinema experience to explore the brutal legacy of colonialism in contemporary Mexico. Through the eyes of a ghostly conquistador, the film recreates Hernán Cortez’s epic journey from the coasts of Veracruz to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, the site of contemporary Mexico City. As the anachronistic fictional character interacts with real victims and subjects of Mexico’s failed drug wars, the filmmaker portrays the country’s current humanitarian crisis as part of a vicious and unfinished colonial project, still in motion, nearly five-hundred years later.
Bold, unique, and strikingly cinematic, 499 mixes non-fictional and performative elements with components of a road movie to show how past traumas continue to affect contemporary reality. In so doing, director Reyes links seemingly disparate histories of violence, while confirming him as one of the potent voices in American independent cinema.
Mejía had received the Best Cinematography Award in the documentary competition at the Tribeca Film Festival for 499 last April, and he was also nominated this year for an Emmy Award for Best Cinematography for his work in Elan and Jonathan Bogarín’s documentary film 306 Hollywood.
Mej́ia joins a select group of Latin American cinematographers that have won a Camerimage Award in the past, including Brazil’s Walter Carvalho for Central Station (1998), Mexico’s Rodrigo Prieto for Amores Perros (2000) and Guillermo Navarro for Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), and Uruguay’s César Charlone for City of God (2003).
