Contract Management Services

Here is how this works in practice. Mexican production contracts operate under the Ley Federal del Trabajo (Federal Labour Law). This differs structurally from US and Canadian employment law and which our entertainment counsel translates into bilingual Spanish-English documents that survive audit by SAT (Servicio de Administración Tributaria) and IMSS (Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social). For EFICINE 189-financed productions — the federal corporate-tax credit pool with roughly $8M annual cap administered through tax-letter applications — every crew and talent contract must align with the tax letter's declared budget, certify Mexican residency or work-permit status, and reconcile against the SAT-issued CFDI 4.0 electronic invoicing system that the auditor will sample.

On the ground, we negotiate STPC (Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Producción Cinematográfica. This covers the IATSE counterpart) collective-bargaining minimums for crew, ANDA (Asociación Nacional de Actores) agreements for principal cast, SOGEM (Sociedad General de Escritores de México) writer contracts, DGADUM (Mexican directors guild) director deals, and SOMECINE agreements for composers and musicians. STIC (the federal cinema crew sindicato) and AMC (Asociación Mexicana de Cineastas) memberships are tracked per crew member.

Here is the short of it. Cross-border contracts dominate Mexican global productions. Our counsel structures USMCA-compliant employment paperwork that lets US-resident and Canadian-resident crew work legally in Mexico under INM (Instituto Nacional de Migración) artist visas and reciprocal tax treaties. For SAG-AFTRA productions filming with Mexican locations and crew, we set up with the union to issue Global Rule One waivers, layer ANDA dues for local performers, and reconcile residual and pension-and-health inputs across both unions. IATSE and DGA productions follow the same parallel-union model with STPC and DGADUM.

On the ground, Tijuana-San Diego same-day shoots route through a separate paperwork stack — daily INM permits, SAT carnet processing, and CBP coordination for return crossing. State-level rebates contracts (Jalisco's 15% rebate, Baja California's 7.5%, Yucatán's cash subsidy, Querétaro location support through COFILMA, Sonora and Chihuahua rebates) need parallel side-letters declaring local spend obligations. Our team also handles location-owner agreements, ejido (communal-land) leasehold contracts that need community-assembly approval, INAH archaeological-zone use agreements, and INBAL heritage-architecture contracts at sites such as the Palacio de Bellas Artes.