Mexico's New Wave.(Mexican movie makers)

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu was at home in Mexico City three years ago when the phone rang. "Hi, this is Sean Penn," said the voice at the other end. "I said, 'Sure, and I'm Marlon Brando'," the Mexican film director recalls. But as he soon realized, the caller really was Penn, phoning to congratulate him on his critically acclaimed feature debut, "Amores Perros." The two men became fast friends, and Gonzalez Inarritu later sent Penn a script written by his longtime collaborator, Guillermo Arriaga, who also wrote "Amores Perros." "[Sean] called me every 20 minutes while he was reading it," says the 40-year-old filmmaker. "He was reacting like a kid; he kept calling to talk about the scene he'd just read." The end result is "21 Grams," a haunting tale of three star-crossed individuals featuring Penn, Naomi Watts and Benicio Del Toro that opens this week.

Gonzalez Inarritu is a hot property in Hollywood these days, and so are many of his compatriots. His friend and fellow Mexico City native Alfonso Cuaron is in England shooting the third Harry Potter installment, with Gary Oldman and Emma Thompson. The 24-year-old actor Gael Garcia Bernal, who starred in "Amores Perros" and Alfonso Cuaron's "Y Tu Mama Tambien," will soon appear as Che Guevara in a movie about the Argentine revolutionary produced by Robert Redford's Southfork Pictures. The actress Salma Hayek won rave reviews last year for her Oscar-nominated film about the turbulent life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. These directors and actors are on the cutting edge of a new wave in Mexican cinema that has inspired comparisons with the evocative work of Quentin Tarantino and Ang Lee--and generated impressive box-office receipts around the world. "They're successful because they're tuned in to the most popular international filmmaking styles," says Carl Mora, a University of New Mexico lecturer and author of a book on the Mexican film industry. "[Hollywood] producers certainly see something in them."

And so do audiences--especially Mexican ones. Though the sheer number of U.S. blockbusters dwarfs local offerings, the biggest-grossing movies in Mexico for the past four years have been homegrown productions like Carlos Carrera's "El Crimen del Padre Amaro" (which starred Garcia Bernal in the title role) and Antonio Serrano's "Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas." Some degree of commercial success may be inevitable, given the rising number of movies being made locally: the Mexican film industry produced nearly 30 movies last year, up sharply from eight in 2000 and just five in 1995. But they are also winning praise for their no-holds-barred, brutally realistic approach. Subjects that were long considered taboo are now fair game; "Padre Amaro," for example, tackled the philandering of Roman Catholic priests and the church's murky relationship with drug traffickers. "Today the doors are totally open in Mexican cinema," says Alfredo Ripstein, a veteran film producer. "We never used to be able to talk about sex or the church. It was all very repressed."

The greater cultural freedom coincides with the fall from power of Mexico's long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). During the party's 71-year reign, successive governments controlled movie ticket prices and closely monitored content. The defeat of the PRI in 2000 seemed to usher in a new era of democracy and freedom of expression, and the release of "Padre Amaro" bolstered those hopes. One anti-abortion group ...