The "Mexico International Cannabis Film Festival" is being held until Sunday in the capital of a country where courts have ruled in favor of decriminalisation, but political rulers have not.
It is a matter of defending "the human rights of users," the festival's director and founder, Iván Librado, told French news agency AFP.
This year's fifth edition is being held in a well-known film club and theatre, a far cry from the clandestinity in which the festival started a few years ago in Guadalajara, Mexico's second city, according to another organizer, Tania Magdaleno.
"People who attend the festival are consumers, but also people who have doubts or wonder why marijuana is frowned upon," she adds.
Marijuana features at the festival in films, series and documentaries, such as "los Ultimos romanticos" (the last romantics), by Uruguayan Gabriel Drak, the story of two friends who live as best they can by cultivating marijuana.
Also featured is a documentary called "Madre planta" about "the struggle of farming mothers in Argentina and Chile" to "improve the quality of life of their offspring with cannabis oil," as the children battle with diseases such as epilepsy.
The programme further includes debates and conferences such as workshop on Saturday on "regenerative agriculture for the cultivation of cannabis."
"You won't see a story of narco-trafficking or anything politically correct," says programmer César Amigo, stressing the importance of decriminalising the use of cannabis and eradicating the prejudices that surround it.
Mexico's Supreme Court decriminalised the recreational use of cannabis for adults in June 2021, declaring laws that prohibit it unconstitutional, in the name of the "right to free personality development."
One year later, Parliament is yet to translate this court decision into law.
