Film La Arriera, From Puerto Vallarta To The World.

Puerto Vallarta, with its cosmopolitan air, its growing contemporary art scene, and its appreciation for cinema with soul, becomes fertile ground for stories like La Arriera, a Mexican film that has begun to make its way among specialized critics and hearts attentive to good cinema.

Directed by Isabel Cristina Fregoso, a filmmaker with deep social sensitivity and a recognized track record at international festivals, La Arriera combines historical drama, natural beauty, and an introspective look at female identity, building a powerful and visually hypnotic narrative. The film had its long-awaited premiere at the MIX Mexico Film Festival 2025, where it received applause for its aesthetic courage and its human approach to gender and freedom.

A challenging and moving story

Set in rural Jalisco in 1930, a time after the Mexican Revolution and marked by the lingering effects of social conservatism, La Arriera tells the story of Emilia, a 15-year-old girl who runs away from her adoptive family to embark on a journey from the mountains to the coast. Her goal: to find her biological father. But what seemed like a genealogical search turns into an odyssey of self-discovery, inner strength, and confrontation with a deeply sexist society.


In order to move freely in a male-dominated world, Emilia takes on the role of a mule driver—those historical figures who transported goods along mountain and coastal roads—and in doing so, challenges imposed gender roles as she traverses rugged landscapes, inquisitive glances, and decisions that lead her toward her own freedom.

Otherworldly locations: the beauty of the Sierra de Jalisco

One of the film's great aesthetic virtues is its cinematography, which portrays the mountainous landscapes of the Jalisco coast with raw and poetic beauty. The natural locations, captured with almost pictorial care, remind the viewer that cinema can also be a window to the sublime. Each shot seems to dialogue with the spirit of the main character: vast, mysterious, in the process of transformation.

At a time when the Mexican film industry is struggling to maintain its identity amid commercial formulas, La Arriera offers an honest and profound alternative, with a visual treatment that seduces the most refined audience. For the residents of Puerto Vallarta who are accustomed to international art but deeply value our own, this film is a must-see.

The director: sensitivity, determination, and legacy

Isabel Cristina Fregoso is no novice. Her artistic sensitivity is backed by a solid and committed career. In 2000, she won the Ariel Award for Best Documentary Short Film for Chenalhó, el corazón de los Altos, as well as the CINED Award for Best Educational Content at the Havana Film Festival. Since then, she has maintained a line of work that combines documentary rigor with an intimate aesthetic, exploring the silenced realities of women, indigenous peoples, and social resistance.

With her production company Machete, Fregoso has consolidated a vision that is not afraid to cut through the thick fabric of the establishment to reveal, with precision and artistry, what lies beneath. In La Arriera, this vision is refined and elevated.

A film about gender, struggle, and empowerment

Emilia's character is not a traditional heroine. She is vulnerable, still developing, and her empowerment comes not from imposition but from recognition. Through her journey, she not only faces the dangers of the road, but also explores her sexuality, her gender identity, and the possibility of being something more than what the world has told her she should be.

In a context where machismo still runs strong in rural areas, this film becomes a hymn of resistance. Not from a pamphlet, but from the emotional intimacy and symbolic power of a well-told story.
Cinema to reflect on, feel, and admire

In Puerto Vallarta, there is a growing audience willing to view cinema as a total art form. Events such as the Puerto Vallarta Film Festival, special screenings at the Cine Club Vallarta, and emerging arthouse cinema spaces such as La Gata Foro Bar reflect a sophisticated, critical, and curious local taste.

La Arriera has everything it takes to fit into this landscape: it is art with Mexican roots, emotional power, and technical craftsmanship that competes at an international level. It is cinema that excites, invites debate, and can undoubtedly be the film of the season for those who wish to reflect on the past from a contemporary perspective.

The upper class can also be sensitive

It should be noted that this type of cinema is not only of interest to academic or alternative sectors. In Puerto Vallarta, many figures from the business, cultural, luxury hotel, and art worlds have shown a growing interest in content that reflects profound realities with aesthetic quality. La Arriera offers a sensitive, intellectually provocative, and visually stunning experience worthy of a large private screen or a special screening with a glass of wine in hand.

This is a film for those who value freedom, identity, and authenticity, concepts that also define the most conscious and evolved elite of this city. If it was ever thought that social cinema had no place among the upper classes, films like this prove that art can cross social boundaries when it is well done.

If you are a lover of cinema with soul, of art that invites reflection while continuing to move you, and you want to support high-quality national productions, La Arriera is a must-see. Whether in a specialized theater, at a gala screening, or at a private screening among friends who love the seventh art, this Mexican film will undoubtedly become an essential topic of conversation among the most select circles in Puerto Vallarta.