Aurora Martinez is the perfect example of an empowered woman who managed to create a name for herself from her career as a director. Martínez’s films are produced almost exclusively in Mexico, with dialogue in Spanish and marketed to the Latin American population. Although her productions receive virtually no theatrical release in the United States, they can be found in many U.S. video outlets, both in VHS and DVD format. Martínez’s movies are generally in the action genre, concentrating on such staple themes as feuds between drug traffickers, illegal trade in human organs, and police investigations, and thus they are not of a kind that normally attracts the attention of foreign film critics. The two facts aforesaid likely explain why she is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, despite her highly prolific output. Martínez appears on screen in many of her movies, though almost never in a leading role. She has often cast Mario Almada in leading roles including, Tijuana, ciudad de narcos in 1998. Her movies tend to portray extreme, explicit violence.
