General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Danón

Danón refers to Danzón, a 1991 Mexican–Spanish feature film (largometraje) directed by María Novaro and spoken in Spanish, starring María Rojo as Julia, a Mexico City telephone operator who travels to Veracruz in search of her vanished dance partner Carmelo.¹^•² The film premiered in Mexico on 27 June 1991, won festival prizes in Chicago, Valladolid, Havana, New York, Uruguay, and Asunción, and was nominated for the 1993 Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film.³^•¹

Key fact	Detail
Identity	Danzón, Mexican–Spanish fiction feature in Spanish, directed by María Novaro, produced 1991¹^•²
Premiere	27 June 1991, Mexico³
Runtime	Sources disagree: 96, 102, 104, or 120 minutes depending on the registry¹^•⁴^•⁵
Lead cast	María Rojo (Julia Solórzano), Daniel Rergis (Carmelo), Carmen Salinas, Tito Vasconcelos, Blanca Guerra³
Financing	IMCINE, Fondo de Fomento a la Calidad Cinematográfica, Televisión Española, Gobierno del Estado de Veracruz, Macondo Cine Video, Tabasco Films¹
Major honors	Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Foreign Film (US, 1993); five ACE Awards 1992; Silver Hugo for María Rojo at Chicago 1991¹^•³
Standing	Considered number 45 among the hundred best films of Mexican cinema²

Spoilers

Plot and genre

The film follows Julia, a mature woman of exuberant grace who meets the equally mature Carmelo during her visits to the Salón Colonia dance hall in Mexico City; when he disappears, she travels to Veracruz to find him.¹ A 1992 French scholarly review adds the social frame: Julia is a switchboard operator (standardiste) raising her fifteen-year-old daughter alone in Mexico City, and her search for Carmelo becomes an initiatory journey in Veracruz.⁶ The Los Angeles Times described the same premise as a switchboard operator who escapes her routine job by frequenting a large dance hall.⁷

The title dance carries the film's cultural weight. A 1992 French scholarly review traces the danzón’s development from the highly codified French contredanse, carried by French colonists and their enslaved Black workers through Haiti and Cuba, then across the Yucatán to take root in Mexico City, Mérida, and above all Veracruz.⁶ The Los Angeles Times traces a parallel origin, from Haitian slaves emulating the cotillions of their French masters, and places the dance in Mexican traditional popular culture much as the tango sits in Argentina's.⁷ The soundtrack draws on danzoneras, the dance orchestras of the tradition, including Danzonera Dimas and Danzonera Alma de Sotavento.¹

Production and credits

María Novaro directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Beatriz Novaro; Rodrigo García was the cinematographer, and the picture was produced by Dulce Kuri and Jorge Sánchez Sosa.¹ The cast pairs María Rojo's Julia with Daniel Rergis as Carmelo, Carmen Salinas as Doña Ti, Tito Vasconcelos as Susy, Blanca Guerra as Colorada, Margarita Isabel as Silvia, Víctor Carpinteiro as Rubén, and Cheli Godínez in the role of Tere; editing was by Nelson Rodríguez with María Novaro.³

The financing combined Mexican state film bodies with Spanish television and private producers: IMCINE (the Mexican state film institute), the Gobierno del Estado de Veracruz, Macondo Cine Video, the Fondo de Fomento a la Calidad Cinematográfica, TVE of Spain, and Tabasco Films.¹ The Cinélatinoamericano catalog lists the production companies as Macondo Cine Video and IMCINE (Mexico) and TVE (Spain), with distribution by Cinematográfica Macondo S.A de C.V., and classifies the work as a 35 mm color fiction film, a Mexico–Spain co-production.²

Release and reception

The film premiered in Mexico on 27 June 1991.³ Its festival record was extensive. María Rojo won the Silver Hugo for Best Actress at the 27th Chicago International Film Festival in 1991 and Best Actress (Espiga de Oro) at SEMINCI Valladolid the same year; the New York Latin Film Festival gave the film its Special Jury Prize in 1991; the 9th Uruguay International Film Festival named it Best Film; the Havana festival awarded Novaro a Diva for Best Direction; and the Asunción festival in Paraguay named it Best Film in 1992.¹^•² In the United States it was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 1993 Independent Spirit Awards.¹

At home, the film swept the ACE awards in 1992, taking Best Film, Best Director (María Novaro), Best Actress (María Rojo), Best Supporting Actor (Tito Vasconcelos) and Best Supporting Actress (Carmen Salinas), and was nominated at the 34th Ariel awards, including for Best Picture.³ Its audience reach crossed class lines: one scholarly study asks how the same Mexican film could be liked by intellectuals at the Cannes Film Festival and by low-income workers in Mexico, and answers with Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of taste and intention, reading Danzón as an antipatriarchal and dynamic representation of the popular.⁸

By the numbers

The registries disagree on running time, and the disagreement is unresolved. The Mexican Secretaría de Cultura registry lists 96 minutes;¹ the Swedish Film Institute records the first showing in Mexico on 27 June 1991 at 120 minutes and the Swedish theatrical release on 22 May 1992 at 102 minutes;⁴ the Festival des 3 Continents lists 104 minutes;⁵ and the Diccionario de Directores del Cine Mexicano, Cinélatinoamericano, Ibermedia and MUBI all print 120 minutes.³^•²^•⁹^•¹⁰ The 120-minute figure has the widest support among catalogs. The Swedish record also documents the format and classification: a 35 mm print, passed for all audiences under censorship number 131410 dated 14 May 1992.⁴

Place in Mexican cinema of the early 1990s

Writing in 1992, the Los Angeles Times observed that Danzón belonged to the small group of Mexican pictures shown beyond Spanish-language cinemas and, even more unusually, to the tiny number of Mexican features helmed by a woman.⁷ Within Novaro's own career it marked a deliberate turn: she began writing the screenplay during postproduction of her first feature, Lola (1989), which had won a dozen international festival prizes, and told the magazine Dicine in July 1991 that she wanted a film "about how pleasant it is to be a woman alone who lives happily", departing from Lola's dramatic tone.³

Critics have placed the film's tone precisely. The Diccionario describes a modern vision of the female universe, strong women who govern their lives, with men as secondary characters who gravitate, or rather dance, around them.³ The French review situates it within popular Latin American cinema while finding deep originality in its daily realism, comparing its sociological, affectionate and corrosive universe to that of the Argentine writer Manuel Puig.⁶ Later scholarship has taken the danzón craze that surrounded the film as a lens on the transformation of intimacy in post-Revolutionary Mexico City.¹¹ The Cinélatinoamericano catalog records its retrospective standing: considered number 45 among the hundred best films of Mexican cinema.²

Availability and legacy

The film remains accessible. It is available on Ibermedia Digital, which also hosts didactic materials for it, and is listed on MUBI, whose synopsis describes 40-something Julia setting out to find Carmelo on a journey that promises to change her life.⁹^•¹⁰ Ibermedia records the film with national and international release in 1991, 120 minutes, 35 mm format, and executive production by Dulce Kuri and Jorge Sánchez.⁹ For researchers, the Swedish Film Institute holds a 35 mm acetate print of 2,790 meters, accessible on request.⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1990s › Drama films early 1990s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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