Delia Casanova in El Apando (1976)

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Wherever dope addicts congregate, they circulate horror stories of Mexican prisons. The semi-professional smuggler who falls afoul of the trickery and corruption implicit in the south-of-the-border drug trade is in for a hot season in hell. Groundbreaking for its time and still gut churning and eye opening today, director Felipe Cazals’s El Apando (1976) is an indictment of a penal system that values exploitation far more than rehabilitation. Harsh, graphic, true to life, here is a movie that strips away the glamour and mystique of living la vida loca and presents the walking-death reality for what it is.