Mexico's submission for next year's Academy Award for Best Foreign Langue Film is Gerardo Naranjo's Miss Bala. The film, which played at the London Film Festival this week, follows the misfortunes of a young girl named Laura: an impoverished, wannabe beauty queen who is inadvertently dragged into the volatile underbelly of the Mexican drug war after witnessing a shooting in a local disco. The film is as tough as its subject matter suggests, and newcomer Stephanie Sigman plays the title role beautifully, providing a heartbreaking mix of pathos and vulnerability. Sigman was in London with writer/director Naranjo to promote the film, and we caught up with them last week to asks them a few questions about how Miss Bala came about.
Miss Bala arrives in cinemas on Friday October 28th.