Part Of The Solution

Exciting Central American film Miss Bala, finds Sigman's pseudo-titular character held hostage as bait in a trans-Tijuana turf war between a crime cartel and anti-narcotic cops. “Sometimes people ask me 'what's the solution for this problem?' Like, seriously? I have no idea. If I had any idea I wouldn't be making films, I'd be a politician or something.”

Stephanie Sigman was making her first ever feature film with Miss Bala. “Believe it or not, I had fun!” she laughs, of starring in the gruelling, gripping picture; speaking with a sense of awe for director Gerardo Naranjo and DOP Mátyás Erdély, who “guided [her]” through the film's tense action scenes and carefully-composed frames. Sigman is present in nearly every frame; the shoot finding her spending “12 hours a day in character, at least,” every day for six weeks. She scored the role due to hailing from Northern Mexico, where it was filmed, and for having a long history as a model, which gave her an insight into her character's beauty pageant aspirations.

Yet Sigman sees few - save for the geographical - similarities between her and her role; seeing her career-model-since-she-was-16 history as being a shrine to independence, whereas her character's sheltered, familial upbringing is one of innocence. “The character is so pure [and] untouched by the world,” Sigman says. “She hasn't done a lot of things, or seen a lot of things. She has this rare naïveté. I think this character has a beautiful thing – innocence. But the world she lives in – being innocent – it's a flaw. It's a flaw that can be exploited. I think she's a reflection of how a lot of people in Mexico feel.”

After Miss Bala premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 (“It was the first time I saw the film, then – I was so very proud,” Sigman recounts), it opened in its homeland amid drama that proved divisive. “It was controversial here,” she says, on the phone in Mexico City. “50 percent of the people had this reaction like, 'Why are we making films about this? It's already all over the news'. But the other [half] of the people thought that it was very cool that we were making a film like this about the subject; that we're making a good film about it.”

Miss Bala touched such a nerve, Sigman thinks, because her titular character - in her innocence and confusion - holds up a mirror to how so much of Mexican society feels about the country's narcotic conflicts. “Sometimes when you see these news reports on TV, you feel like, 'How can this be happening in my country?'” she says. “But I think it's starting to feel closer to people, now, because the war that the government declared on the cartels is very problematic. Because the cartels have so much power, and have had it for so long. It's almost like the country is at war, now. It's a very bad, very complicated, very conflicted situation; one that's difficult to understand, even for Mexicans. It really affects the energy in the country. You can feel this big, like, question mark. How is this happening? How did we get to this point, as a country? What can we do about it?”