Friends of Mexican filmmaker Samuel Ríos y Valles are still in shock. The director was murdered last Friday in the Del Valle neighborhood, in Mexico City, after being robbed. He and his partner were inside a vehicle, and the assailants ended up shooting Ríos y Valles, 50 years old. “They killed him for a cell phone, it’s so unfair. How much is life worth here in Mexico?”, says the producer and friend of the victim Corinna Martínez to EL PAÍS. The Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office has announced that it is investigating the homicide, for which there are still no arrests. The film industry calls for justice for the crime against a much loved and respected figure within the sector.
At 8:30 p.m. on a Friday, Samuel Ríos y Valles and his girlfriend Erika left their house to go to a birthday party. At the intersection of Gabriel Mancera and Félix Cuevas, on the corner of Parque Pascual Ortiz Rubio, some assailants broke the passenger window and asked for their cell phones and wallet. In that moment of confusion, the filmmaker collided with the car in front of him and lowered his partner. He was shot; It was a direct bullet to the head. They transferred him to a medical clinic in Patriotismo, but they could no longer save him.
The Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation folder for the crime, but has not yet found the whereabouts of the aggressors. So far it is known that they fled the scene in a taxi. The C5 video surveillance cameras are being investigated and witnesses are being sought, according to the latest statement.
Samuel Ríos y Valles was born in Mexico City in 1971 and spent decades in training. He studied Directing in Los Angeles, script with the writer Guillermo Arriaga or Production with Tita Lombardo. Colleagues in the union remember a man passionate about his work, honest, meticulous, with a great sense of humor and always a kind word.
Now, his friends remember, he was at a spectacular moment in his career. Last year she premiered his debut feature film The days that I was notafter directing several shorts like don’t send me or the forgotten details. “She was enjoying a dream come true. Going to festivals, writing, at a time of plans and projects. It is extremely hard, ”says Corinna Martínez, who was part of her team at the production company Mastodonte Films, which the filmmaker had founded four years ago, in shock. “It is a very hard blow for the industry, for all the lives that he touched. The amount of love and respect that he generated.”
From the nightmare they now hope that it will not go unpunished. “The general feeling of all of us who are affected is to demand justice, that one who can go out freely at 8:30 p.m., without fear of losing his life for a cell phone, for a material issue,” says Martínez, who points out all the direct and collateral damage of that violence.
The Del Valle neighborhood has traditionally been one of the quietest in the Mexican capital. In the Benito Juárez mayor’s office, where the crime occurred, around 65 crimes against life and bodily integrity are recorded each month, according to data from the Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office. In a country immersed in an unbridled spiral of violence, these attacks increase the general feeling of insecurity.
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