Cinema Tropical remembers Mexican filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, and author Patricia Martínez de Velasco, best known for the award-winning feature Aquí entre nos (Between Us), who passed away earlier this year at the age of 63. Her passing was announced in July by Mexico’s Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC), where she studied filmmaking and began a career that would span fiction, documentary, advertising, and scholarship.
Born in Mexico City in 1962, Martínez de Velasco studied Communications with a specialization in film at Universidad Iberoamericana, graduating with honors in 1984. She later attended the CCC, where she directed several short films, including Como un destello (1987), El sótano (1989), and Acopilco (1990), before graduating in 1992. Her early work screened internationally, including at festivals in Créteil and Tel Aviv.
Martínez de Velasco devoted an important part of her early career to recovering and documenting the history of women in Mexican cinema. Her 1991 book Directoras de cine: Proyección de un mundo oscuro, published by the Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía (IMCINE) and CONEICC, was a pioneering study of women directors, tracing a lineage from early Mexican filmmakers including the Ehlers sisters, Mimí Derba, Cándida Beltrán Rendón, and Adela Sequeyro to later generations of women working in the country’s film industry.
That interest also led to her documentary Matilde Landeta (1993), dedicated to one of the pioneering women directors of Mexican cinema. She subsequently directed La vaquita marina (1994), about the critically endangered cetacean endemic to the Gulf of California, before building an extensive career directing commercials in Mexico and the United States.
Patricia Martínez de Velasco with filmmakers Carlos Bolado (left) and Kyzza Terrazas at the 2013 edition of the Tucson Cine México film festival.
Martínez de Velasco made her feature directorial debut with the family comedy Aquí entre nos in 2011. Written, directed, and produced by Martínez de Velasco and starring Jesús Ochoa, Carmen Beato, Diana García, and Giovanna Zacarías, the film follows Rodolfo Guerra, a family man who decides one morning not to go to work and gradually discovers how little he knows about the lives of his wife and three daughters. The screenplay drew inspiration from the relationship between the filmmaker’s own parents.
The film became an international festival success, winning the Bronze Zenith for Best First Feature at the Montreal World Film Festival, the Audience Award and a screenplay prize from the press association at the Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival, and the Audience Award for Best Foreign Feature at the Newport Beach Film Festival, among other honors. Actor Jesús Ochoa also won Best Actor at the Guadalajara International Film Festival. Martínez de Velasco was subsequently recognized with NALIP’s 2012 Estela Award.
More than a decade later, Martínez de Velasco returned to the characters with Aquí entre nos 2 (2022), once again serving as writer, director, and producer.
