MADRE MÍA


Tocaya is a film collective based in Mexico City. 

Founded by writer-director duo (Ambika Subra and Monica G. Carter), we make multilingual, collaborative, and internationally co-produced films that allow cultures to meet and evolve into a universal, third culture.

Beyond the screen, we expand our films into dance, music, fashion, and art practice — a multidiscplinary model for building long-form narrative IP simultaneously with community.


Film is at a critical inflection point.



    ------  AI is transforming how stories are made, monetized, and distributed.

    ------  Attention spans are fragmented.

    ------  Formats are infinite. Meaning is unstable.

    ------  Cultural institutions (fashion, art, ritual, dance, music) have lost symbolic authority.


We are producing more, but connecting less.





Power in the future means longevity.



Longevity requires a system that:



    ------  Builds cultural cohesion across verticals

    ------  Sustains emotional continuity in fragmented media

    ------  Expands narratives across screen, fashion, design, and digital ecosystems

    ------  Reinvents financial logic for multidisciplinary storytelling

    ------  Prototypes rituals, formats, and experiences that people want to keep living inside

We are create like artists, but think like systems strategists.


We understand that the future of film, branded content, creator-led campaigns, and prestige IP are format shifts, not systems solutions.


Drawing on analysis from tech disruption think tank RethinkX, we’ve mapped the fractures across collapsing industries — film, advertising, and culture — to design scalable, multidisciplinary narratives built for long-term cultural resonance.
Tocaya’s projects consist of:


The Tocaya Slate


2 feature films, 1 series, 2 shorts: 
In development and production under a new model that aligns creative vision with cultural and fiscal longevity. 

Upcoming release: Madre Mía (2026)



The Tocaya Model

A system of expansion that ensures cultural and fiscal longevity for long-form narrative.




The Tocaya Development Strategy


A modular framework for creative agencies and studios to originate and extend cinematic IP across formats and markets.




Tocaya Consulting


Connecting creative leaders to navigate cultural collapse and design future-facing story systems.


MADRE MÍA (2026)

25 min
Directed by Mónica G. Carter
Written by Ambika Subra
Cinematography by Miguel Zetina
Produced by Tocaya, Musas Films and The Maestros
Language: Spanish

On the outskirts of Tampico, unemployed loner Miguel (56) struggles to care for his dying mother, La Madre, with whom he shares a toxic, codependent bond. When rumors of an alien sighting sweep through town, Miguel seizes a desperate idea: to stage his bald, frail, and naked mother as the “alien” and sell the photos to pay for her medicine. The stunt spirals out of control, plunging the town into hysteria and Miguel into moral collapse. As La Madre’s condition deteriorates and Miguel’s grip on his secret unravels, he is forced to confront a strange reality.

Core Essence:

Madre Mía explores the unreal vs. the real, the fear of the unknown, the hunger for validation, and the unsettling question: If aliens are the “other” that we fear and exploit, are we the real aliens?



If you’d like to attend screenings / events for Madre Mia, contact us here for information and invitation.

TAMPICO PLAYERAS:





Madre Mía extends beyond cinema into the streets of Tampico through a series of limited-edition playeras. 


Made in collaboration with local artists, the shirts function as portable fragments of the film’s mythology—objects that return the story to its origin and re-activate it in public space. 

Sales directly support the community of makers and Tocaya’s off-the-screen initiatives: workshops, artist residencies, and future projects that continue building the Madre Mía world.


OFF-THE-SCREEN



Madre Mía was conceived not just as a film, but as an ecosystem. Through the Tocaya Model, the film extends into workshops, local collaborations, and public artifacts that keep the story alive beyond the screen.

In Tampico, Tocaya and Musas Films (Tampico) organized a series of AI generation workshops, where the community learned about the role of AI in cinema and technical usage practices. 

In Madre Mía, we used AI as a tool to create a news cycle that circulates throughout the film.

These workshops turned new technology into a form of community mythology—teaching participants to translate their own stories into visual worlds.

Upcoming projects include the first cultural publication of Tampico as a newspaper, more workshops, and participation in Tampico’s Dia de Marciano. 

Proceeds from all extensions of the film circulate back to the artists and support Tocaya’s next cycle of workshops and cultural projects, creating a regenerative model where storytelling becomes a shared infrastructure.






Upcoming Projects from the Tocaya Slate

TO THE EAST

Feature Film (In Development with the Satyajit Ray Institute in Kolkata)
Language: English / Spanish / Tamil
Off-the-screen: Bharatanatyam Dance, Fashion, Sound
Awards: Sundance Screenwriters Lab Shortlist 2020
 

An Indian-American woman in Mexico City re-stages her childhood dance camp from memory. As the performance unfolds, long-buried traumas and contradictions resurface.




BITCH

Feature Film (In Development)
Language: English
Off-the-screen: Intervention series, Fashion, Sound
Awards: Blacklist Nominee 2022

A mysterious outcast uses an ancient ritual to punish the elite by turning them into dogs. But a new friendship forces her to question her rage, her mixed roots, and the fractured world around them.

See our first off-the-screen of BITCH here.




GRASA

Short Film (In Development)
Language: English / Spanish
Off-the-screen: Immersive, Editorial: taqueria cult myths

A young Mexican-American girl arrives in Mexico city to explore her heritage, only to be kidnapped and drawn into an underground cult after eating a greasy taco.




ENTRE DOS CASETAS

Series (In Script Development)
Language: English / Spanish / Arabic

After a town blackout, three siblings discover their home exists by accident between two toll booths. Their journey leads through roadside micro-nations shaped by exile, diaspora, and resistance.


Tocaya Founders:



Ambika Subra

Writer, Designer, Dancer
HBO / Netflix / Apple / more
www.ambikasubra.com


Monica G. Carter

Director, The Maestros
https://monica-g-carter.format.com/


contact 




tocayo(a) [noun] from Classical Nahuatl tōcāyoh, means a person that has the same name as another


Exhausted by the inexorable order of things.... We break from the bounds of the comfortable vertical elevator and plunge into the horizontal expanse, into the ocean-unknown....cracking our individual skins to rediscover what makes us act, feel, and move at the most deeply connective level. We reach, not the point where we no longer say I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance to say I. 

It is in this ocean that movies leave the screen and their subjects; music escapes from its venue; dance levitates from the stage; and words transcend from the page. It is in this ocean that we connect and become several, become others, mirror one another...

as Tocayas.










02 SOLUTION