Miami, U.S.A. – The highly-provocative dramatic series from Mexico about the country’s illegal drug trade, and the first Mexican series about drug legalization, ‘Estado de Gracia’ (State of Grace), will make its world premiere on  June 4, 2012, exclusively on Cinelatino—the nation’s leading Spanish-language movie channel.

“Estado de Gracia” is a political suspense thriller that presents a realistic portrait of the drug trafficking crisis in Mexico, shedding light on the network of money, power and corruption that fuels the ongoing drug trade.

Set in Mexico City, the fictional series centers on a local congresswoman who proposes a law to legalize drugs in an effort to dismantle the powerful drug cartels and end the narco-related violence. Facing powerful enemies, the congresswoman—played by esteemed Mexican actress Karina Gidi—watches all aspects of her life come apart after proposing this controversial legislation.

The 13-episode series portrays a sobering view of the country’s illegal drug trade and touches on sensitive issues such as corruption among politicians and police, blame, the impunity of drug traffickers, violence and drug-related killings, addiction, temptations among those in office, the role of the media, and the dangers facing non-corrupt police officers. The series also captures the human element to the story, showing the impact of drugs in the home, at the office and in school.

“We knew we had to acquire this series right away,” said Ricardo De Leon, Director of Programming for Cinelatino. “Drug violence is a reality in Mexico, and no other Mexican series has dared broach the topics of drug violence and legalization in such an honest and realistic way.”

“Estado de Gracia is one of the best-written, most cutting edge series to come out of Mexico, and we’re proud to give our U.S. viewers access to it before it airs anywhere else in the world,” said James M. McNamara, Chairman of Cinelatino. “With drug legalization as one of the hot topics in the presidential elections coming up in Mexico and the U.S., ‘Estado de Gracia ’ is a relevant, must-see series that will have everyone talking.”

The series was directed by the highly-acclaimed, Oscar-nominated filmmaker, Carlos Bolado, who has won 21 awards at prestigious international film festivals for his work on films like Promises, a documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was nominated for an Oscar, and Solo Dios Sabe (Only God Knows), a romantic thriller starring Diego Luna and Alice Braga that was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

The series features top quality production values and a strong cast of top Mexican talent, includingKarina Gidi (Abel; Gitanas), Daniel Martinez (Ella y el Candidato; El Infierno; Como No Te Voy a Querer), Raul Mendez (Mariachi Gringo; Sultanes del Sur; Amar a Morir), Jose Carlos Rodriguez(Rudo y Cursi; Vantage Point; Asi del Precipicio), Lisa Owen (Vantage Point; Nacho Libre), Roberto Sosa (Get the Gringo; Cartas a Elena), and Dagoberto Gama ( Amores Perros; La Reina del Sur; El Infierno).

Cinelatino, which has been on air for nearly 18 years, began airing highly acclaimed series in 2009 with the launch of “Los Simuladores.” “Estado de Gracia” is among the high-caliber series to air on the premium, commercial-free movie channel. Cinelatino is available in more than four million homes across the U.S., fully distributed on the major cable, satellite and telco providers.

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Starring Will Ferrell as “Armando”, Diego Luna as “Raul”, Gael García Bernal as “La Onza” and Genesis Rodriguez as “Sonia”, ‘Case de mi Padre’ is a romantic action adventure with an affectionate nod towards the classic telenovelas.

Armando Alvarez is an earnest, gentle soul, a dreamer. He has lived at and worked on his father’s ranch his entire life. He has a special bond with nature and enjoys his life in the countryside. He is the local patron saint of animals and lost causes. So what if he is not exactly un cientifico de la NASA or suspiciously never seems to be too interested in women? He is kind and dependable and loves his family – especially his brother Raul.  It is clear to everyone that they are siblings, they have so much in common. Their last name – for instance – they share that.

Raul is the shining star in the Alvarez clan. He is a sophisticated, suave and slick international businessman. Charismatic and successful, he has earned his father’s respect. Armando? Not so much. Still, Armando is happy and loyal and has only the utmost affection and admiration for his father and brother.

Unfortunately, the Alvarez ranch has fallen on hard times. Fortuitously Raul returns home and, ever the hero, pledges to settle all of his father’s debts and to shower the family with expensive and extravagant gifts. He also introduces his beautiful and feisty girlfriend Sonia, winning even more of his father’s esteem.

All is not what it seems, on so many levels. Raul’s business turns out to be less than legit and slowly Armando starts to realize what kind of a person his brother really is – oh, in the process, he also starts to fall for Sonia. But before that happens, he loathes her. It’s complicated.

The life Armando knew, everything he believed is turned upside down. His simple existence undergoes a sea change. Slowly he begins to embrace his manhood, to understand who he is, to accept his destiny. A magical white mountain lion helps. It’s tricky but ultimately makes perfect sense – to Armando, anyway.

Raul’s machinations will eventually lead them all into a war with Mexico’s most feared drug lord, the mighty Onza. The stakes are incredibly high. There are many guns and cigarettes. Yet Armando feels no fear. La Onza will soon find that he has never tangled with anyone quite like Armando Alvarez.

Where to begin.. Saturday Night Live

‘Casa de mi Padre’ began several years ago, mostly because Will Ferrell just thought starring in a Spanish language comedy would be funny.

“I don’t remember when I got the idea and there was really no good reason, but I always had the notion of doing a Spanish language comedy. I do not speak Spanish but I thought the concept of having someone who is – depending on who you talk to – either fairly well known or kind of well-known in American language film – placed in a foreign language film would be something you don’t see every day. And I love the Mexican-Western genre,” Ferrell says.

Fortunately, Ferrell knew some likeminded souls who also thought this pescado fuera del agua theme would be entertaining – writer Andrew Steele and director Matt Piedmont, both of whom won Emmy Awards for their work on Saturday Night Live.

“I just had the most general concept of what the movie would be about, but I had nothing specific and that’s where Andrew Steele, a writer who is a longtime friend from our time together at Saturday Night Live, came in. I pitched the potential, and asked him if he thought this would be fun to write? And he actually came up with the story of ‘Casa de mi Padre’. And then we reached out to another friend of ours from Saturday Night Live, Matt Piedmont,” Ferrell recalls.

Part of the Ferrell’s general concept revolved around the classic telenovela, dramatic, serialized melodramas in Spanish that are extremely popular in Latin American countries. Telenovelas typically revolve around a family and focus on a romantic couple. Often the storylines reflect sociocultural messages. They have also, in the past, provided rich comedy opportunities for Ferrell, Steele and Piedmont.

“From the outset, Will had always framed the project as something ‘like’ a telenovela. Telenovelas have always been a comedy staple for comedy writers. When I was at Saturday Night Live, we probably parodied telenovelas five or six different times. They are so over the top and so dramatic that they just lend themselves to satire.

We did not want to do a mere parody however, so we used the telenovela as a kind of springboard for something hopefully more imaginative, with an affectionate nod towards the format,” Steele says.

Image Courtesy of   Casa de mi Padre

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The film ‘Casa de mi Padre’, which recently opened in Mexico and will be in cinemas in the UK on June 8, is the story of Armando Alvarez (Will Ferrell) who has lived and worked on his father’s ranch in Mexico his entire life. As the ranch encounters financial difficulties, Armando’s younger brother Raul (Diego Luna), shows up with his new fiancée, Sonia (Genesis Rodriguez).

It seems that Raul’s success as an international businessman means the ranch’s troubles are over as he pledges to settle all debts his father has incurred. But when Armando falls for Sonia, and Raul’s business dealings turn out to be less than legit, all hell breaks loose as they find themselves in a war with Mexico’s most feared drug lord, the mighty Onza (Gael García Bernal).

NALA Films is a financing and production company that focuses on commercial stories that empower and uplift audiences. ‘Casa de mi Padre’ dovetailed with NALA’s corporate and artistic mission and struck a personal chord for NALA President & COO Darlene Caamaño Loquet.

“What appealed to me the most about it was; finally here was an opportunity to make a mainstream comedy with a major comedic movie star that just happened to be in Spanish. I am a mainstream human being who just happens to speak Spanish because of my Cuban descent and I think that there are millions of movie goers just like me,” she says.

“We at NALA love to make people laugh and we love to do it in a thoughtful and responsible way. This movie is finally an opportunity to acknowledge that the Hispanic cultures are a part of the American mainstream, without patronizing and boxing us as a demographic.”

The film attracted incredibly talented and highly regarded actors- in particular, two of Mexico’s finest actors, Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal, who are also old friends and business partners.  Luna plays Raul Alvarez, Armando’s successful, charismatic brother and Bernal, the feared drug lord Onza.

“We have an outstanding cast, it was an incredible coup to get them – we are still in disbelief that they agreed to do it,” says Ferrell.

In particular, Luna and Bernal committed entirely and enthusiastically to their roles. While the pair have a teasing and joking rapport and engage in a constant banter off camera, they are not primarily known as comedic actors. In ‘Casa de mi Padre’, they absolutely reveal their funny side.

“It was an amazing stroke that Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna signed on as they bring so much gravitas to the picture and are amongst the best actors in the world. I remember talking to Gael on the phone about it while he was shooting some movie in Georgia — I’m talking in Eurasia not the US. He had like an hour of cell phone reception a day and we were able to talk about it and how it might go. Diego got it right away and it was exciting thinking he may come onboard, and they did and we were thrilled.

They are super hilarious in the movie, as we approached the whole thing as if we were making and epic drama like ‘The Godfather’ or ‘Scarface’. Diego comes off like a young Pacino and all of his ideas on how to play his character were right on and really funny. Gael played it so perfectly too and comes across so funny, playing it like a villain from a James Bond film. His instincts comedically were right on — always play it as straight as possible,” says Piedmont.

“When my agent pitched me the movie, it sounded so crazy that I thought he was making fun of me,” Luna recalls. “A film with Will Ferrell, set in Mexico but will be shot in California.

It’s all in Spanish, you will play his brother and you are both supposed to be Mexicans. It’s a comedy but it talks about what is happening today and has a very interesting social comment. I was like, what the fuck? Then I read it and I loved it. I talked to Matt Piedmont and I REALLY liked him. He had these creative ideas as to how to shoot it and the kind of visual language he was going to use that sounded very interesting and crazy and like nothing else I had seen before. So it was quite easy to want to be part of this.”

Both Luna and Bernal have experience acting in telenovelas. Luna and Bernal, whose respective parents worked in Mexican film and theater, appeared in telenovelas as children. But as Luna points out, as the filmmakers intended, ‘Casa de mi Padre’ went much further than a simple spoof of telenovelas – and in so doing, provided some fascinating, borderline harrowing acting challenges.

“It is really a parody of movie making. We intentionally made mistakes and pointed at them. We allowed ourselves to be terrible actors, which was very tough. You spend your whole career saying, I’ll never do this or that and in this film, we were asked to do that kind of stuff. It’s the first time I’ve done a film like this where I was allowed to laugh so much about what we were doing, where I was able to do everything that crossed my mind.

There was a lot of improvising. In this film, we were supposed to make the wrong choice and by making very many wrong choices, it happens to be funny. Like there’s these uncomfortable moments where we held the reactions longer than we would have and we were encouraged to keep going. We may have started with the telenovelas but then we made fun of people making movies and how fiction works, of the characters and the props … Everything was a chance to make a joke about art,” Luna says.

Image Courtesy of   Casa de mi Padre

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Will Ferrell describes his character in ‘Casa de mi Padre’, Armando Alvarez, as “… a very sweet, earnest soul. He loves his family, he loves his father and brother. Armando may not be the smartest guy but he has great intuition and a corazon grande.” As it turns out, his quirky charm ultimately wins the affections of his on-screen brother Raul’s beautiful fiancée Sonia, played by Genesis Rodriguez.

Rodriguez, who appeared in 150 episodes of the telenovela “Prisonera,” certainly understood the more histrionic aspects of ‘Case de mi Padre’. But as director Matt Piedmont points out, it was more than her telenovela experience that appealed to the team – in fact, she was the first actress they saw for the part.

“Genesis Rodriguez is amazing. She was the first woman we saw in casting for the role and she blew us away. She was so committed and real but she totally got the vibe. She really pulls off the entire movie – she’s funny and an exceptional actress and looks classically beautiful – like a young Lana Turner,” Piedmont says.

‘Casa de mi Padre’ marks Rodriguez’s motion picture debut. Rodriguez admits that her background in telenovelas was absolutely helpful, especially in a move as unique as ‘Casa de mi Padre’.

“The movie is pretty spot on to what I’ve been doing for the past six years. It’s my genre, so I felt really comfortable with the material, something I could really deliver. I definitely thought it was a crazy movie but that’s the beauty of it,” Rodriguez says. “I definitely was not expecting to do a Spanish language film in Hollywood. It was really fun – and something different. Everyone was taking a risk. We didn’t know what line we were crossing but we were definitely crossing one,” she says.

Although Ferrell may not be a fluent Spanish speaker, his dedication and delivery inspired Rodriguez nonetheless.

“He had a beautiful accent and he puts the correct emphasis and emotions on the words. I was so impressed by him,” she says.

Rodriguez was also thrilled to work with Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal.

“Gael and Diego are great actors, I really admire them. They are giants in the cinema, in truth and they are very kind, very dedicated, very natural, unaffected. They were funny and ridiculous but I mean that as a compliment. It was a great experience to work with everyone,” Rodriguez says.

Some of the “ridiculous” had to do with a running gag about smoking. Raul and Onza smoke anything and everything all the time, while throughout the film the hapless Armando struggles to roll a simple cigarette.

“Yeah, Raul will smoke anything that burns,” Luna comments. “I quit smoking before the movie and these bastards made me smoke like crazy in the film. I was smoking like a pack a day because it was one take after another. It wasn’t planned or anything. The first day, we had the character smoking and I said, well what if we have him suddenly smoking a cigar and any other thing. I didn’t realize we were going to have him smoking in every scene at every moment but that’s what happened. It was a great idea but today I cannot climb simple stairs.”

Image Courtesy of   Casa de mi Padre

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