Luis Estrada's smile

Don Andrés Henestrosa said that a smile is the music box of the heart. It comes from the fullest understanding of reality.

I spoke yesterday with filmmaker Luis Estrada, hours before the premiere in 190 countries of Las Muertas , his six-part series (Netflix, September 10, subtitled in 36 languages, dubbed in 16, surely the largest production the company has made in Spanish).

I listened intently to the vast amount of information Luis was giving me, but his smile dominated everything. I'm talking about a sixty-year-old director who, arguably, has nothing left to prove because, time and again, he has lived up to high expectations with quality, talent, passion, audiences, and cinema. But there he was, like a nervous rookie about to receive an opportunity, with overwhelming enthusiasm.

"It's my dream project, it's my most ambitious project," he emphasized, if need be. "It's a production, I think, like few others have ever seen in Mexico, with a cast of more than 170 actors."

Good luck to Luis in this recreation of Las Poquianchis , by Ibargüengoitia, “the most heartless women in history who leave us a portrait of that Mexico with so much violence and impunity, then and today,” says the director who, even recounting the horror, seems to understand well that other aphorism of Henestrosa: the smile is of the soul.