Hey gringo! went the classic opening line – but that’s not what Mexican cinema is about these days. Suddenly (or at least over the last decade or so) there’s a whole new generation of film-makers setting the pace with hard-hitting, intelligent films reflecting the socio-reality of Mexico. Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien), Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, Pan’s Labyrinth) and Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel) are the main trio of directors whose films are giving the world a whole new perspective on Mexico. Called the Buena Onda (the ‘right’ or ‘cool’ wave) in Mexico, they prove yet again the vitality of this country and its clear sense of identity, totally detached from its neighbours over the border.

Mexican cinema is by no means new. An earlier heyday took place in the 1930s - 1940s when spectacular scenery, luminous skies, talented actors and directors and of course low wages all combined to make it the world’s number two film industry after Hollywood. Top foreign film-directors such as Sergei Eisenstein (Que Viva Mexico!), Fred Zinneman, Luis Buñuel and John Huston found endless inspiration there – from the desert to the sierra and the slums of Mexico City. Buñuel’s Los Olvidados (the Young and the Damned), crowned at Cannes in 1951, remains a benchmark, following the lives of young delinquents living on the edge and mixing realism with surreal intensity – all in sharp black and white. There is a direct line between that film and the harsh reality spiked with humour and tenderness of Amores Perros, made 50 years later.

In between Mexico saw a few classics – including the ground-breaking Night of the Iguana (1964), John Huston’s haunting film set in Puerto Vallarta which starred Ava Gardner and Richard Huston. (Hovering in the background was Elizabeth Taylor, as this was the start of their theatrical on-off romance). Huston, though American, had a lasting love-affair with Mexico and much later in 1984 tried to do justice to Malcolm Lowry’s masterpiece, Under the Volcano. In this case he didn’t quite manage to do justice to the despairing internal world of the consul’s mezcal-sodden downfall.

In 1992 Alfonso Arau brought Laura Esquivel’s quirky book, Like Water for Chocolate, to the screen. As the main character, Tita, stirred her erotic fantasies into extraordinary dishes aimed at her admirer Pedro (forced to marry Tita’s unsexy sister), the revolution rumbled on in the background somewhere in the north of Mexico. Violence, sex and magic realism are again close partners. Immediately after this, El Mariachi, made by the 23-year old Hispanic Texan, Roberto Rodriguez, was incredibly successful for a low-budget, slow-moving and offbeat film, propelling spectators into a small, dusty town drowned in a kind of latterday cowboy atmosphere.

Fast forward to 2002 and you come to one of Mexico’s most extraordinary and audacious films yet, still not known on the mainstream circuit but something of a cult film elsewhere – Japon, self-produced and directed by Carlos Reygadas, a lawyer in his early 30s who suddenly turned to film-making. Dubbed a parable by some, it is agonisingly slow, at times poetic, at other moments incomprehensible, and apparently inspired by Tarkovsky in its use of music and natural sounds. The title is irrelevant (a kind of riddle) as the entire film is shot in the Mexican sierra of Hidalgo, just north of Mexico City. A canyon, a wise old woman, a desperate passer-by who has come there to commit suicide, village scenes and characters… and an unexpectedly raw sex scene. Sensuality is huge, yet again. Since then Reygadas has made another existentialist drama, Batalla en el Cielo and, this year, Luz Silenciosa which looks set to be another cult film.

As far as acting goes it’s Gael Garcia Bernal who continues to scoop up all the awards then there’s Salma Hayek who first hit the headlines in Roberto Rodriguez’ Desperado (1995) and went on to co-produce and star in the less successful Frida (2002). Vanessa Bauche (Amores Perros) is another to watch.

So it’s not quite sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, more sex, despair, death and violence. Intense stuff that can only come straight out of Mexico.