Canana Films
Mexican production company co-founded by Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal, producing socially engaged Mexican and Latin American cinema including Deficit, Abel, and Cesar Chavez.
Overview
Canana Films is a Mexican production company co-founded in 2005 by actors Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal alongside producer Pablo Cruz. The company produces Mexican and Latin American films with social and political themes, operating as both a commercial production company and a platform for emerging and established filmmakers from the region. Canana has helped develop a generation of Mexican filmmakers and has been instrumental in raising the international profile of contemporary Mexican cinema.
The company operates from Mexico City and develops projects across feature film, documentary, and digital content, with an emphasis on stories that reflect Latin American social realities.
History
Luna, Garcia Bernal, and Cruz launched Canana in 2005, drawing on the visibility they had gained through their acting careers and their shared conviction that Mexico needed a production infrastructure capable of supporting ambitious, socially engaged filmmaking. The founders' connections within the international film industry helped Canana secure co-production partnerships and distribution relationships that would have been difficult for a newly established Mexican company to access independently.
Key productions include Deficit (2007, directed by Diego Luna), Abel (2010, directed by Diego Luna), La Vida Precoz y Breve de Sabina Rivas (2012), Miss Bala (2011), Cesar Chavez (2014), Tiempo Compartido (2018), and various documentary productions and shorts programs that have supported emerging Mexican filmmakers.
Canana also created the Ambulante documentary film festival, a traveling festival that brings documentary cinema to communities across Mexico with limited access to theatrical exhibition. This initiative reflects the founders' commitment to cinema as a tool for social engagement beyond commercial entertainment.
What Filmmakers Should Know
Canana develops projects by Mexican and Latin American filmmakers, with a particular interest in socially resonant stories and distinctive voices. The company's connections within Mexican cinema and its relationships with international co-production partners make it an important entry point for filmmakers seeking to develop ambitious projects within the Mexican film ecosystem.
Mexico's IMCINE (Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografia) provides production funding for Mexican films, and Canana has experience working within this funding structure alongside international financing.
See Also
For understanding how Latin American co-production works, see Distribution Deals Explained. To model revenue projections, use the Revenue Forecast Calculator.
