| Ángeles Cruz | |
| Birth Place: | Villa Guadalupe Victoria,, Oaxaca, Mexico |
| Occupation: | Actress, director, screenwriter |
| Awards: | Ariel Award (2013, 2019, 2022) |
| Education: | Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura |
Ángeles Cruz (born 1969) is a Mexican actress, film director, and screenwriter. As a filmmaker, she has focused on themes of ostracism, female sexuality, and gender violence. In a 2022 interview, she explained, "I have three imbalances: I come from an indigenous community, I am a woman, and I am a lesbian – things that have been stereotyped and placed in an emerging situation of survival."[1]
Her work has been recognized with three Ariel Awards.
Ángeles Cruz is originally from Villa Guadalupe Victoria in, a mostly indigenous community high in the mountains of Oaxaca.[2] [3] She grew up primarily speaking Spanish, but learned some Mixtec from her father.[4] In her community there was no electricity, no water, and no cinema. She saw only one film in her first sixteen years, , which her father had in 16 mm.[1] "When I saw the film for the first time in a cinema, it changed me, transformed me; it totally pulled out the rug," she recalled.[5]
She wanted to be an agronomist and dedicate herself to farming, but her family had to relocate, first to Tlaxiaco, and later to Oaxaca. There, she switched to studying theater, a decision she credits to her high school teacher Sergio Santamaría.[6]
Cruz studied at the Miguel Cabrera Center of Artistic Education in Oaxaca, and later completed a licentiate in acting at the INBA Theater Art School in Mexico City.[7]
In 1994, she began getting roles in cinema. Her first film as an actress was the Swedish-Danish drama La hija del puma about massacres that occurred in Guatemala against the indigenous people.[1] Her performance was nominated for the Guldbagge Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.[7]
In 2011, Cruz started writing her own stories, and directed a short film made from one such script, La tiricia o cómo curar la tristeza. It was produced by the Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía, and won the Ariel Award for Best Short Film in 2013.[8]
She continued with the shorts La carta and Arcángel, followed by her first feature, Nudo Mixteco, starring and Noé Hernández, which tells three stories of women living in indigenous communities in Oaxaca. Regarding the film's explicit love scenes between women, Cruz said,
| Year | Title | Role | Director | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 | La hija del puma | Aschlop | Åsa Faringer and Ulf Hultberg | |
| 1998 | The Other Conquest | Doncella | Salvador Carrasco | |
| 2000 | Rito terminal | Celia | Óscar Urrutia Lazo | |
| 2002 | Agustí Villaronga | |||
| 2005 | The Violin | Jefa Guerrilera 1 | Francisco Vargas | |
| 2008 | Araceli 2 | |||
| 2010 | Petra | José Luis Gutiérrez Arias | ||
| 2011 | Matiri | Margarita Cadenas | ||
| 2012 | The Girl | Rosa's mother | David Riker | |
| 2016 | Tamara y la catarina | Tamara | ||
| 2018 | Dos Fridas | Adelita | Ishtar Yasin Gutierrez | |
| Tiempo de lluvia | Soledad | Itandehui Jansen | ||
| Traición | Ignacio Ortiz | |||
| 2019 | La ira o el seol | Juan Mora Catlett |
| Year | Title | Role | Channel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001–2005 | Lo que callamos las mujeres | Rosa, Tomasa | Azteca Uno | |
| 2008 | Capadocia | Fernanda Castrejón | HBO | |
| 2017 | El Chapo | Evelina | Univision | |
| 2018 | Malinche | Macti | Canal Once | |
| 2018–2020 | Here on Earth | Jacobina | Fox Premium |
| Year | Award | Category | Work | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Best Supporting Actress | Rito terminal | [9] | ||
| 2013 | Best Fiction Short | La tiricia o cómo curar la tristeza | |||
| 2014 | Best Actress in a Leading Role | La hija del puma | |||
| 2015 | Best Fiction Short | La carta | [10] | ||
| 2017 | Best Actress | Tamara y la catarina | [11] | ||
| 2019 | Best Fiction Short | Arcángel | [12] | ||
| Best Narrative Short Film: Drama | [13] | ||||
| Best Fiction Short | [14] | ||||
| 2022 | Best First Work | Nudo Mixteco | [15] | ||
| Best Picture | [16] | ||||
| Canvas Award from the | Best Picture | [17] |