Los olvidados

Arte Abierto, in collaboration with FundarqMx, presents a new edition of Arquicinema, a space where cinema and architecture converge. This edition is titled La Ciudad de México a través del cine.

During four special sessions featuring interdisciplinary talks that explore how architecture shapes cinematic narrative and how, in turn, cinema becomes a tool to observe and understand Mexico City’s urban, social, and landscape environment.

Through the analysis of selected scenes from key films—from the classics of Luis Buñuel to the contemporary gaze of Alfonso Cuarón—specialists in architecture, urban history, and visual culture will reflect on how the city’s built spaces are also narrative, symbolic, and emotional sites.

This series seeks to open an interdisciplinary dialogue and foster exchange on the role of architecture in the cinematic representation of the city.

Arquicinema: La Ciudad de México a través del cine proposes looking at cinema through the lens of architecture, and vice versa, as a way of exploring the connections between built space, urban identity, and the narratives that define us.

Los Olvidados (Luis Buñuel, 1950)

This film follows two young men living in the poorest neighborhoods of Mexico City, confronting violence, abandonment, and inequality.

From the perspective of architect María Bustamante Harfush, the film is analyzed as a visual document of Mexico City’s invisible urban heritage: dilapidated tenements, vacant lots, precarious constructions, and peripheral settlements that, while absent from the official imaginary, are essential to understanding the city’s social and spatial history of the 1950s.

This reading invites us to reflect on the cultural and heritage value that certain architectural spaces still hold in the city’s collective memory—such as La Romita, the neighborhood where the film was shot.

Arq. María Bustamante Harfush

Architect with honors from Universidad Iberoamericana, where she also teaches. She holds a Master’s in Housing and Urbanism from the Architectural Association, London, and directs the practice María Bustamante Arquitectura. Author and researcher, she has published books on Mexico City’s urban history. She served as juror and mentor for Jóvenes Creadores FONCA (2023–2024), chairs the Architecture Alumni Board at Universidad Iberoamericana, and is President of the College of Chroniclers of Mexico City. She also presides over FUNDARQMX, an award-winning foundation for its cultural and urban-architectural work, and the only one in Mexico linked to the International National Trust Organizations.

— Arte Abierto