Are Mexican movies popular in Spain, and vice versa?

[AndyD]

I´m a big movie fan - independent stuff mostly and certainly not Hollywood. In my conversations with many Spanish people here in England whne we talk about movies they usually say that Spanish cinema (and TV) is terrible with a few exceptions and, probably as students of Spanish watch his movies, they go out of their way to say they hate the movies of Pedro Almodóvar. The movies they do like seem to be even between Spain and Latin America - with some of my favourites such as Celda 211, El Sectreto de sus Ojos, Diarios de Motocicleta, Tesis etc.

[noisygirlkk]

I can’t speak for our Mexican siblings across the ocean, but in Spain, if Mexican movies are released at all in cinemas, it’s in pretty niche venues. More often than not, you can only see them in cable/satellite networks and that is if they are somewhat popular. That is, unless they are from pretty known directors and have been lauded all over, no Mexican movie actually makes it to Spain. I mostly use vpn for mexico to browse the programs of mexican netflix.

[golyplot]

I'm not sure which country dubbed them, but you can find Pokemon dubbed in Spanish, and even the very obscure anime Jetter Mars (jet marte) dubbed in Spanish, when most English-speakers have never heard of the latter anime.

To be fair, that's not saying much, because (dubbed) anime was really big in Europe in the 80s and early 90s, while it was basically unheard of in the US until the late 90s. There's lots of anime that are cultural touchstones for 30-40 year old French people which most Americans have never heard of. Apparently, the 70's Heidi anime was also enormously influential basically everywhere that isn't the US, to the point of forming the basis for the pop cultural image of Heidi in Europe and Latin America.

[iguanamon]

I can’t speak for our Mexican siblings across the ocean, but in Spain, if Mexican movies are released at all in cinemas, it’s in pretty niche venues. More often than not, you can only see them in cable/satellite networks and that is if they are somewhat popular. That is, unless they are from pretty known directors and have been lauded all over, no Mexican movie actually makes it to Spain. I mostly use vpn for mexico to browse the programs of mexican netflix.

I first saw "Como Agua Para Chocolate" in a mainstream cinema in Madrid, Spain back in the 1990's and a few years back I saw "Y Tu Mamá Tambien" (of course it has the Spanish actress, Maribel Verdú) there as well. Just like on this side of the Atlantic, only the big films from both countries really make it over there and over here.

[nooj]

The exception in Spain are cartoons and animated films. Until sometime in the late 90s it was normal to have dubbed animated movies in an American version shown in Spain. They were later redubbed in a European version.

A friend of mine is a bit older than me and she didn't realise that the movies she used to watch as a child, such as The Little Mermaid, were dubbed by Mexican actors, until a friend told her. She didn't believe it, went back to watch it and realised that it was true. She says that as a child, she only remembered the characters speaking a bit funny, but that goes with talking crabs and magic.

This early childhood exposure no longer holds, the generations born in the 21st century in Europe no longer watch dubbed American versions of cartoons, except for the recently released Coco, which would have been absurd to redub in a European version.