Sergei Eisen­stein planned to make an opus magnum about Mexico and its cul­ture. He wanted to cap­ture the spirit of Mexico in a film with a pro­logue, four episodes, and an epi­logue, por­tray­ing the dri­ving forces that have shaped its his­to­ry – life vs. death, beauty vs. cor­rup­tion, free­dom vs. oppres­sion, and hea­then cul­tures vs. Chris­tian­i­ty. How­ev­er, he was unable to finish his project due to prob­lems with his Amer­i­can spon­sors, who final­ly stopped pro­duc­tion after Eisen­stein, Grig­ori Alexan­drov and the cam­era­man Eduard Tissé had worked for one year with­out pay.

The already filmed episodes became the basis for many film ver­sions that were later made. Grig­ori Alexan­drov made his own expand­ed and mon­taged ver­sion, which offers “a glimpse of what could have been. Qué viva México! is not a time­less film, it is a movie very much of its time (think Zap­atista). Its title could also be Long Live the Rev­o­lu­tion!”(Film­mu­se­um Wien)