Los Tigres del Norte

I found out about Tigers Are Not Afraid (2019) when the director, Issa Lopez, appeared on Josh Olson and Joe Dante's podcast, "The Movies that Made Me". They have a policy of not asking the director to talk about her films, but what little they mentioned sounded interesting, so I queued it up.

It takes place in a small (medium?) town in Mexico. The gangs are shooting up the town, and "disappearing" people - mostly women and children - for reasons unknown. Young Estrella (Paola Laura) is in class, listening to the teacher talk about the elements of fairy tales when a gun fight breaks out outside. As they all lay on the floor to avoid the bullets, the teacher hands her three pieces of chalk and tells her, "Three wishes". She walks home from school past a corpse, and a trail of blood follows her.

We also meet a gang of street kids, orphans no older than 10 or 12. The leader is called El Shine (Juan Ramon Lopez), possibly for the burn scar on his face. He steals a gun and cell phone of one of the gangsters. He takes them back to his crew, including Morro, a mute child who carries a stuffed tiger. He tells Morro a story about the tiger, who escapes from a drug lords menagerie and eats dogs, cats, ...and children! Because tigers are not afraid. El Shine likes to graffiti this tiger around town.

When Estrella realizes that her mother has been disappeared, she tries to join Shine's crew, because she's hungry. El Shine will only let her join if she kills the gang leader, who probably killed her mother. Deathly afraid, she enters his house and sneaks up behind his chair, then wishes she didn't have to kill him. The wishing chalk provides - he is already dead.

Still, the children have to run - the gang will be after them. In fact, the dead man's boss calls his cellphone to tell Shine as much. And all along, that drop of blood follows Estrella.

Now, this is a horror film. There are ghosts and wishes. But of course, the lives of the children who really live like this are much more horrible. But Lopez makes them into great characters, full of strength and courage, without making them smart or precious. And she gives them a very satisfying ending.

So what did Issa Lopez say about the movie? That it is based on the hippos that Pablo Escobar kept, who escaped and are now breeding in the wild. But they couldn't get a hippo within their budget. For a while it was going to be a zebra, but in the end, they found a very nice tiger at a reasonable rate. That worked out well.