A Road Movie About Casting Directors Takes Morelia's Top Pix-in-Post Prize
Galerna, a fiction feature from Mexico's Tatiana Huezo, took the top prize at Impulso Morelia, the pix-in-post industry section of the 10-day Morelia Film Festival, which wraps Oct. 25. It follows two casting directors into the remote reaches of Mexico, where the hunt for natural actors for a sci-fi film turns into an unsettling tour of their own fears, biases and preconceptions.
The José Maria Riba Award, presented by Cinépolis Distribution and Profest 2026, brings $14,740 — 250,000 pesos — toward post-production needs, promotion, or both. Galerna had already won the Egeda Platino Industria Award at the San Sebastián festival, where it appeared in the WIP Latin America competition showcase.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Casting directors spend their working lives deciding what a stranger's face can carry, so sending two of them into remote Mexico to find 'natural' actors — and letting the search become a study of their own biases — is a premise with real teeth.
A premise costs nothing. The José Maria Riba Award pays $14,740 toward finishing or promoting a film, which makes it a completion grant wearing a trophy's clothes — and honestly the more useful object of the two.