FILM: The New Aztec Camera ; the National Film Theatre Is Celebrating Mexican Cinema, Which Is Flourishing like Never before. CHRIS SULLIVAN Reports

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No one can deny the impact that Mexican cinema has had on the rest of the world in the 21st century. Four films by Mexican directors were in competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival, all of which massively overshadowed their big-budget US counterparts, and now there is a six-week season of Mexican movies at London's National Film Theatre. How could such a country, once regarded as an unsophisticated Third World backwater, suddenly upstage its reputedly super-sophisticated superpower neighbour?

"In Mexico everybody makes movies for all the right reasons, none of which are to get rich," says the director Alfonso Cuaron, whose latest picture, Children of Men, is …