Michelle Garza Cervera’s two-time Tribeca Award-Winning Breakout Feature Debut, Huesera: The Bone Woman, was also screened at the 2022 Fantastic Fest in Austin and now arrives in theaters from XYZ Films. Huesera: The Bone Woman (formerly Huesera) premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival in New York in the festival’s genre-driven Midnight section and would go on to win both the Best New Narrative Director and Nora Ephron awards, an unprecedented feat for a Midnight selection. Following the world premiere, HUESERA: THE BONE WOMAN won both the Blood Window Award for Best Feature Film and the Citizen Kane Award for Best Directorial Revelation at the internationally recognized Sitges Film Festival in Spain and the Feature Film Audience Award at the Morelia International Film Festival, Mexico’s premier film festival and one of the most important film events of the Latin-American subcontinent.
The supernatural Mexican horror feature is led by Natalia Solián (Carlos Eichelmann Kaiser’s Venice selection ZAPATOS ROJOS) in a star-turning performance as Valeria, a young woman expecting her first child who becomes cursed by a sinister entity. Plunged into a terrifying and dangerous world, a group of witches emerge as her only hope for safety and salvation, but not without grave risk. The film also stars Alfonso Dosal (Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico), Mayra Batalla (Prayers For The Stolen), Mercedes Hernández (Identifying Features), Aída López (Capadocia), and Martha Claudia Moreno.
Widely lauded by critics, who have praised HUESERA: THE BONE WOMAN for its mesmerizing lead, beautiful cinematography, chilling sound design, and, above all else, its evocative approach to themes of motherhood, the role of women in modern society, queer identity, and body autonomy — all incredibly timely and relevant today more than ever. The film has quickly been revered as an accomplished, Mexican folk-inspired spin on crucial maternal horrors such as The Babadook, Hereditary, and Rosemary’s Baby, with Forbes hailing the feature as “a stunningly portrayed cinematic outing,” Variety calling it “spine-chillingly terrifying,” and The Hollywood Reporter lauding it as “an astute study of desire and self-deception” in their rave reviews.
With her feature debut, the Mexico City-based Garza Cervera — a rising young talent in the Latin-American genre scene already celebrated for her earlier short films that played festivals around the world — announces herself as a bold, visionary new voice in genre-challenging, independent film not to be ignored.
The Mexico-Peru co-prod is produced by Machete and Disruptiva in co-production with Señor Z, Maligno Gorehouse, IMCINE, Terminal, Simplemente, and Estudios Churubusco, and is co-written by Garza Cervera and Abia Castillo.
About Michelle Garza Cervera
Michelle Garza Cervera is a Mexico City-based director and screenwriter who graduated from The Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica. She was awarded a Chevening scholarship to study in the United Kingdom, where she completed an M.F.A in Film Directing at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her debut feature, HUESERA, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival 2022, where it won the Best New Narrative Director and the Nora Ephron awards, and has continued to collect over 30 accolades from international film festivals around the world, including the Sitges Film Festival’s Citizen Kane Award for Best New Director and the Blood Window Award for the Best Ibero-American film. She is in currently in pre-production of her second feature film project, PALIZADA, with the production company Piano (Annette, Triangle of Sadness). With El Estudio (Dance of the 41), she is working on a feature adaptation of the short story Ese verano a oscuras (That summer in the dark) by the multi award winning Argentinian writer Mariana Enríquez.
Garza Cervera’s widely praised Mexican supernatural horror film opens exclusively in theaters February 10th in major markets nationwide across the U.S. and arrives on VOD February 16th, 2023.
Source: XYZ Films