Toronto: ‘El Sabor de La Navidad’ Producer Salma Hayek Pinault Talks Transgender Inclusion, Actors Strike

Producer Salma Hayek Pinault says her heartfelt household dramedy El Sabor de la Navidad because it tackles the problem of transgender acceptance in Mexican households displays a altering and extra progressive nation and tradition.

“Misunderstandings in households need to do with generational variations,” the Mexican-American star-turned-producer instructed The Hollywood Reporter forward of a world premiere for director Alejandro Lozano’s Christmas household film on the Toronto Movie Competition on Wednesday night. Hayek Pinault additionally marked her help for the SAG-AFTRA strikes by proudly sporting a T-shirt adorned with the actor union’s protest emblem whereas at TIFF.

“It’s not solely Spanish (language), however a Mexican movie. And so we’re very grateful that we have been capable of deliver it to Toronto and that the union was supportive of it, in any other case I’d not have come, with out permission,” she stated as her movie debuted on the Royal Alexandra Theatre.

El Sabor del la Navidad provides three intersecting tales set round Mexico Metropolis’s Christmas celebrations, which come collectively within the movie’s emotional finale. In a single storyline, Penelope, an estranged transgender daughter, appears to reconcile along with her household. And her mom performed by Mónica Dionne has to simply accept her new gender whereas her sisters take all of it in stride.

Hayek Pinault says she’s a part of an older era protecting tempo with youthful and extra progressive Mexicans in understanding transgender folks. “The best way folks understood issues then, it’s not the identical as now. We’re attempting to catch up,” she insisted.

The movie’s screenwriter Jose Tamez, who can be a longtime producer accomplice for Hayek Pinault as a part of their Ventanarosa Productions banner, stated Mexico has come spherical, if uneasily in elements, to embracing transgender folks. “I’m not saying that trans persons are not experiencing typically discrimination, however on the similar time there’s a stage of acceptance that we haven’t seen earlier than,” Tamez argued.

As a measure of progress, Hayek Pinault pointed to the nation’s Supreme Courtroom lately broadening abortion rights within the nation simply as Mexico is about to elect its first feminine president subsequent yr as two girls will compete for the management put up.

“Issues are getting legalized once they’re getting unlegalized in america,” she stated of abortion bans spreading in U.S. states as Mexico strikes to decriminalization. The opposite two storylines in El Sabor de la Navidad equally have characters attempting to navigate the emotionally fraught season of Christmas.

In a single, two buddies check their friendship by working as competing Santa Clauses in Alameda Central Park, and the third storyline has a lonely chef with belief points make use of a brand new kitchen assistant to prepare dinner household Christmas dinners for shoppers, solely to have long-dormant romantic emotions rekindled inside her.

El Sabor de la Navidad is the second movie in a primary look deal for Spanish-language films that Ventanarosa Productions has with TelevisaUnivision and its VIX streaming platform, with the primary movie being the romantic comedy Quiero Tu Vida.

“That is our second movie with VIX. The primary one was a primary hit and it’s solely been one yr. We’re doing rather well,” Hayek Pinault stated. El Sabor de la Navidad stars Mariana Treviño, Andrés Almeida, Armando Hernández, Juan Carlos Medellín, Mónica Dionne and Marco Treviño.

The movie’s producer credit are shared by Erica Sánchez from Lemon Studios.