The Country Within: María Novaro’s Border Films

Abstract

Using the definition of the border film genre, and concepts like space and place, this article will analyse how María Novaro’s films El jardín del Edén/ The Garden of Eden (1994) and Sin dejar huella/ Without a Trace (2000) helped destroying stereotypes that had been built in commercial movies during decades by creating, through characters and images, first the city of Tijuana as a mosaic, then the southern border of Mexico as a utopia; this will be done by analysing how she constructs the idea of region and regional identity by denying the homogeneous traces sustaining national identity.