Growing up, filmmaker J. M. Cravioto (“Bound to Vengeance,” “Diablo”) kept hearing tales of the infamous Festival de Avándaro, also known as the Mexican Woodstock. Set over a weekend in September of 1971, the music festival on the shores of Lake Avándaro was originally scheduled to feature 12 bands. However, it ended up with 18 acts and hundreds of thousands of concertgoers—far exceeding the original attendance estimates.

The result was pure chaos, with the government even asking those who captured footage of the event to delete all proof of its existence. Looking to repackage the mythology of the festival for a new generation, Cravioto made “Wheels, Weed & Rock n’ Roll: The Legend of the Mexican Woodstock.”

The mockumentary trails the creative process behind the festival and the madness of the event itself. It taps into the comedy style found in similarly toned offerings like “The Office” and “This is Spinal Tap” to reveal how what was supposed to be a car race with a few bands playing ballooned into what Mexico’s conservative establishment hailed as “a hell of naked depravity, blood, potheads and death.”

After playing in the Mezcal Mexican competition at this year’s Guadalajara Film Festival, the film will also screen in competition at the Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival.

“Now, even though you can find information about a story like this more easily, you don’t hear about them as much,” Cravioto tells Variety. “That’s why I always try to make films that rescue these Mexican stories. I also love rock and roll and stories involving young people and culture. I wanted to join this youth spirit, party energy, and an anti-government Chicano rock movement and tell a story that had never been told like this.”

On the mockumentary format, Cravioto explains that it came out of a lack of financial resources. Once the team realized they did not have the funding needed to shoot the original script as envisioned, producer Mariana Franco jokingly suggested making a low-budget documentary instead.

“That’s when it dawned on us to do it as a mockumentary,” recalls the director. “I rewrote the script in a week and it was a perfect solution for our lack of money. The only luxury we had in the project was to shoot in 16mm because I wanted the grain and the texture from the time.”

The making of his 2019 animated feature “Olimpia,” about three students caught up in Mexico’s National Autonomous University student movement in 1968, taught Cravioto how to play with and manipulate images—a valuable skill going into “Wheels, Weed & Rock n’ Roll.”

From approximately one hour of 16mm footage recovered from the festival, Cravioto extracted much of what we see of the event on screen, resorting to green screen only for a handful of sequences.

“The key advice I can give on making a film like this is to have a lot of experience, not only you as the director but the team around you,” he adds on how they managed to pull off a film that looks like it was made for twice its budget. “We are a team of over 50 people who have worked together for over 15 years and are now maybe one of the most experienced working in film in Mexico. We shot big shows for Disney, Netflix. When we have money, we experiment, but sometimes I pick up the phone and tell people we don’t have money, but we have a great story, and this is what happened here. It was only achievable because of the team.”

Speaking about the Mexican film industry more broadly, Cravioto describes it as undergoing a “moment of crisis.” He says his colleagues are “trapped” under the perception of possibility given by the support offered by public funding bodies—which is only available to a fraction of the projects trying to get made each year and “covers maybe 30% of the requirements for filmmaking.”

Cravioto is thankful for streaming platforms but notes that their money comes with expectations of large audiences and financial returns, which often rules out authentic indie stories. “We are trapped in a situation where only 10 production companies get to work and access is very difficult to both money and confidence in your projects.”

The director adds that the phenomenon of the Three Amigos (Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, and Alejandro González Iñárritu) was “of its time” and due to a generational run in filmmaking that also spawned Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Quentin Tarantino.

“It’s a great generation, but we shouldn’t use them as an example of success [in Mexico] because their story is not what it is like for everyone else working today. A film like ‘Frankenstein’ is only for Guillermo del Toro.”

With this in mind, Cravioto has been strengthening his relationship with Spain, having directed “Billionaires’ Bunker” and “Berlín” in Europe. After the success of these shows, Cravioto is now working on his first full feature film in Spain.

Although details remain under wraps, the upcoming film will be called “The Kiss of the Vampire,” and it will be a drama inspired by a real Spanish story. The filmmaker is currently locking in financing for the project.

“I did my last two shows in Spain, and I think it’s been a great opportunity to show that Mexican filmmakers are more than just a few films at big festivals,” adds Cravioto. “There are a lot of stories and colors and textures in our cinema, and it’s sad to see that only a handful get into the big festivals. We need to show there is hope that a lot more spaces will open up in the future.”
https://variety.com/2025/film/festivals/j-m-cravioto-wheels-weed-rock-n-roll-1236573487/