Cristo Fernández Returns to FICG Guadalajara: The Story Behind Five One-Minute Films
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(FICG Minuto / Cristo Fernández / Eduardo Ávila / Guadalajara Film Festival)
(6 MIN READ)
How Mango Films and director Eduardo Ávila turned a film festival brief into five cinematic pieces built around the most essential element of cinema.
credits
Eduardo Ávila
/ DIRECTOR
Bodega de Arte
/ ART
Mariel Martínez
/ EDITOR
Estrella Araiza
/ festival director
Cristo Fernández
/ Lead Talent
For the 41st Festival Internacional de Cine de Guadalajara, Mango Films created five FICG Minuto pieces directed by Eduardo Ávila and starring Cristo Fernández. Each sixty-second film honors a landmark FICG title by having Fernández read its screenplay aloud, shot in black and white with anamorphic lenses and minimal staging. The project premiered at the opening gala on April 17, 2026.
On April 17, 2026, the opening gala of the 41st Festival Internacional de Cine de Guadalajara began with something unexpected. Before the speeches and the red carpet names settled in, the audience watched Cristo Fernández, framed in black and white, reading the screenplay of Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos aloud to camera. The piece, directed by Eduardo Ávila and produced by Mango Films, was the first of five FICG Minuto segments created for this edition of the festival.
The FICG Minuto is a recurring annual piece commissioned from a different production company each year to capture the spirit of the festival. For the 40th edition, the piece was produced by Cebolla Films and directed by Samuel Kishi Leopo and Edgar Amor. For the 41st, the festival turned to Mango Films.
What is the FICG Minuto and what made this edition different?
For the 41st edition, Mango Films made a deliberate shift toward live-action cinematic storytelling built around a single question: what is the most essential element of cinema?
Eduardo Ávila’s answer was the screenplay. “These pieces revolve around the screenplay, which is the first moment you tell the story and see the movie in your head,” he said. “They were born from the need to tell something different, to make something connected to cinema but that was also advertising, containing the very specific language of film, with more cinematic elements.”
The result was five pieces shot in black and white, with anamorphic lenses, heavy sound design, and a deliberately slow narrative pace built around a single performer reading from a script. In an era where branded content is optimized for mobile-first, fast-paced consumption, the FICG Minuto was built as a counter-trend: conceived for a dark room, a large screen, and an audience willing to sit with sixty seconds of cinematic stillness.
Which five films were chosen and why?
Pelo Malo (FICG 29, 2013)
by Mariana Rondón.
Winner of the Golden Shell at San Sebastián, this Venezuelan co-production explored identity, race, and gender through the story of a boy who wants to straighten his hair.
Cronos (FICG 8, 1993)
by Guillermo del Toro.
The film that put both the director and the festival on the international map. Co-produced by the Universidad de Guadalajara, it won the Critics' Week Prize at Cannes, and Del Toro went on to become a founding member of the FICG board.
Quebranto (FICG 28, 2013)
by Roberto Fiesco.
Winner of the Maguey Award and Special Jury Prize at FICG before earning the Ariel for Best Documentary Feature, establishing itself as a landmark in Mexican LGBTQ+ cinema.
El Complot Mongol (FICG 34, 2019)
by Sebastián del Amo.
A gala premiere at FICG 34, adapting Rafael Bernal's novel, widely considered the masterwork of Mexican noir fiction, with Damián Alcázar, Eugenio Derbez, and Bárbara Mori.
No nos moverán (FICG 39, 2024)
by Pierre Saint-Martin Castellanos.
Winner of the Mezcal Prize for Best Mexican Film and the Audience Award at FICG 39, selected to represent Mexico at the Oscars and Goyas in 2026, and recipient of four Ariel Awards in 2025 including Best First Film.
"We needed an actor with screen presence, range in comedy and drama, who could do a lot with very little," "Cristo has a long personal history with the Festival de Cine en Guadalajara, so he was the ideal person."
- EDUARDO ÁVILA
Why Cristo Fernández?
Cristo Fernández was the right choice for a format that strips away almost everything except performance and text. “We needed an actor with screen presence, range in comedy and drama, who could do a lot with very little,” Ávila said. “Cristo has a long personal history with the Festival de Cine en Guadalajara, so he was the ideal person.”
Fernández, a Guadalajara native known internationally for his roles in Ted Lasso and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, brought both the acting range and a personal connection to the festival that made the project resonate beyond its technical execution. “I loved working with someone who is open to ideas, who listens, because cinema is collaborative,” he said. “The scenes weren’t always designed to last one minute, so we had to find a rhythm of performance and camera. We worked with such good energy that we shot five.”
That last detail reveals something about the creative dynamic on set. The original plan called for four pieces. The chemistry between Ávila and Fernández on set pushed the project to five.
Fernández, a Guadalajara native known internationally for his roles in Ted Lasso and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, brought both the acting range and a personal connection to the festival that made the project resonate beyond its technical execution. “I loved working with someone who is open to ideas, who listens, because cinema is collaborative,” he said. “The scenes weren’t always designed to last one minute, so we had to find a rhythm of performance and camera. We worked with such good energy that we shot five.”
That last detail reveals something about the creative dynamic on set. The original plan called for four pieces. The chemistry between Ávila and Fernández on set pushed the project to five.
How were the pieces made?
The central creative challenge was condensing scenes originally longer than sixty seconds without losing their dramatic weight. “We had the challenge of making everything work in one minute,” Ávila explained. “If a scene ran longer, we had to find how to cut it without it feeling rushed.” Every aesthetic decision served this logic of reduction. Black and white photography shot by director of photography Alejandro Martínez, anamorphic lenses operated by Juan Carlos Campos Taylor, sound design by Locomotive Studio, Dolby 7.1 mix by Semillero Estudios, and color correction by Kaput Post all worked together to create a deliberately contemplative experience. Direction of art was handled by La Bodega de Arte, with post-production and editing directed by Mariel Martínez.
How were the pieces distributed at the festival?
Each of the five pieces was distributed across the festival’s programming so that different audiences encountered different Cineminutos, spread across nearly 30 venues, hundreds of functions, and the thousands of audience members who came to watch the 200 films from 52 countries screening at FICG 41.
The Cronos piece opened the inaugural gala on April 17, 2026. The FICG Minuto project operated on a simple premise: that a film’s memory begins with its screenplay, before cameras roll and before lights come up in a theater.
Key Takeaways
- The FICG Minuto is a sixty-second annual commission produced for the Festival Internacional de Cine de Guadalajara, created by a different production company each year.
- For FICG 41, Mango Films produced five pieces directed by Eduardo Ávila and starring Cristo Fernández, each built around a performer reading from the screenplay of a landmark FICG film.
- The five films span four decades of festival history: Cronos (1993), Quebranto (2013), Pelo Malo (2013), El Complot Mongol (2019), and No nos moverán (2024).
- The original brief called for four pieces. The creative dynamic between Ávila and Fernández on set produced a fifth.
- The pieces debuted at the FICG 41 opening gala on April 17, 2026, and were distributed across nearly 30 venues and hundreds of screenings throughout the nine-day festival.
- The crew included director of photography Alejandro Martínez, sound design by Locomotive Studio, Dolby 7.1 mix by Semillero Estudios, and color correction by Kaput Post.
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OUR HUBS
GUADALAJARA
Independencia 55,
Piso 4
Zona Centro 44100
+52 (33) 3616 9091
CDMX
Masaryk 191 Piso 3
Of. 303 Polanco V
Sección 11560
+52 (55) 8200 0076
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