Adriana Paz is on the hunt for a new project.
The 44-year-old Mexican actress and dancer, a Cannes Film Festival 2024 Best Actress winner alongside the key female cast of Emilia Pérez, will headline The Huntress” (La Cazadora).
Paz will portray a Ciudad Juárez factory worker turned vigilante who attains the status of a legend.
The Huntress marks the first feature from U.S.-Mexican filmmaker Suzanne Andrews Correa whose film Green won the Short Film Jury Award for U.S. Fiction at the Sundance Film Festival.
The Huntress will be produced by Mexico’s Záfiro Cinema, headed by Gabriela Maire and Edher Campos and U.S. outfit The Population, led by Mynette Louie, marking their second Mexico-U.S. co-production after they joined forces for I Carry You With Me, Záfiro Cinema’s first title and a Sundance Audience Award and NEXT Innovator Award winner.
Though Paz’s Cannes win has thrown her into the international spotlight, she has won three Mexican Academy Ariel Awards: Best Actress for Perpetual Sadness (La Tirisia), and Best Supporting Actress for Hilda and Charity (La Caridad).
Most recently, she starred in Arillo the Hombre Muerto.
“It’s easy to say yes when there’s a powerful, meaningful, and well-written story like The Huntress,” Paz told Variety. “I feel very fortunate to portray such a complex character like ‘Luz,’ a woman full of contrasts, confusion, fears, and desires, with such a deep and painful personal conflict.”
Inspired by true events, “The Huntress” turns on Luz who takes justice in her own hands to kill a serial rapist in order to secure a safer and more just world for her fourteen-year-old daughter and other young women factory co-workers in Ciudad Juárez. She also has to face up to the consequences of her actions.
Teresa Sánchez, who won the Sundance Special Jury Award for Acting for Dos Estaciones, Jennifer Trejo, Guillermo Alonso and rapper and acting newcomer Eme Malafe, round out the cast, which has been ensembled by Roma’s casting director Luis Rosales.
The Huntress is produced in association with Films+Pro, Chemistry and CTT Exp & Rentals. Paz, Rosales and Fabiola Velázquez serve as executive producers.
La Cazadora’s screenplay received grants from the Sundance Institute and SFFILM and awards from the Princess Grace Foundation, Directors Guild of America and Toulouse’s Cinelatino in France.
The film will wrap principal photography by Christmas and is expected to premiere in 2026. It is intended to be a theatrical feature, Campos added.
In real life events, “Diana, Cazadora de Choferes,” was a blond-haired woman, aged 25-40, who shot and killed two bus-drivers in Ciudad Juárez in 2013. Different women had filed at least 12 complaints against bus drivers for sexual violence against women working on Ciudad Juárez’s factories, without any result. After the murders, bus-drivers declared to the press that they feared for their lives.
Since 1993, hundreds of women factory workers have been tortured and killed. Their killers have not been brought to justice.
“The Huntress is the portrait of a woman watching her life unravel after falling victim to an act of savagery,” said Paz. “Luz tries to rebuild herself and struggles to survive in a violent environment that offers neither refuge nor trust. The complexity of human actions is deeply explored in her journey,” she added.
“What we want to portray is how The Huntress thinks and feels over these 24 hours, to see her humanity and moral complexity. The film does not treat her as a heroine nor her murders as personal revenge,” Maire told Variety. “Rather, it is meant to be a galvanizing call for change in the way that society protects its most vulnerable populations.”
In many ways, The Huntress is a Western, with the protagonist attempting to create a civilized place in a lawless land.
“The Huntress shot in Ciudad Juárez. It was very crucial for us to authentically capture this unique environment, a border town that evokes the essence of classic Westerns. Juárez lies in the heart of the desert, and on the surface, much of it resembles a lonely ghost town. Yet, we discovered another side, one full of life and hope in its people,” said Campos.
“It is a feminist Western, conscious of a long history of female resistance against the impunity of a system. And it’s a mythological Western with elements of Greek tragedy,” said Andrews Correa. “But ultimately, it subverts all that’s represented by the genre, rejecting rudimentary definitions of good and bad.”
“There’s nothing more appealing to me than a project where there’s no black or white, good or bad, and where the female presence behind the camera is as strong as it is in front of it,” Paz added.
Andrews Correa recently worked as a writer and director on the Paramount+ series Minimum Wage (15 a la Hora). They have received grants from the Sundance Institute and SFFILM, and awards from the Princess Grace Foundation, Directors Guild of America, and Toulouse’s Cinelatino.
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