Ariel Awards 2023, one of the biggest awards to recognise the Mexican film Industry, was cancelled due to insufficient funds, which prompted Guillermo Del Toro to call out what he describes as the ‘systematic destruction’ of the Mexican film industry.

The Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences (AMACC) is a state-run organisation that conducts the Ariel Awards every year to recognise excellence in the Mexican film industry. The AMACC recently announced that they are cancelling the Ariel Awards 2023 due to a “serious financial crisis”

Following the cancellation of the Ariel Awards, Del Toro put out a tweet saying, “The systematic destruction of Mexican Cinema and its institutions – which took decades to build – has been brutal. We survived Lopez Portillo’s six-year term, but this is unprecedented,”

In the tweet, he refers to Lopez Portillo, a former Mexican president whose term saw one of the worst financial crises faced by the Mexican government. The multiple Academy Award-winning filmmaker has recently released a stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio. The film was released on Netflix on 24 November and received generally positive reviews.