“I feel that these Platino Awards are like the United Nations of cinema. It doesn’t matter what country you come from, what accent you have, since the language unites us,” he says in an interview with EFE the actress, who will compete for the award with the Spanish Patricia López Arnaiz and Blanca Soroa, both nominated for Sundays and with the Argentine Dolores Fonzi (Nativity scene).
Reyes assures that these awards, which recognize the best of Ibero-American cinema, are “strengthening the brotherhood between countries” since they now include Brazil and Portugal with whom “Portuñol is shared.”
The actress attended the Platino Awards on several occasions but this is the first time she will do so as a nominee, so she wants to “enjoy the moment”, since the ceremony will be held in Mexico, where most of the film was filmed. “It is not a coincidence to return to Mexico with this nomination,” he says.
survival story
It’s still night in Caracasdirected by Mariana Rondón and Marité Ugás, has four nominations for the Platino Awards: best Ibero-American fiction film, best supporting male performance (Édgar Ramírez), best female performance (Reyes) and best special effects – a category whose winner has already been announced and went to the Spanish film Sirat-.
The film, shot between Mexico and Venezuela, and released in 2025, is inspired by the novel The Spanish woman’s daughterby Karina Sainz Borgo, and tells the odyssey that the protagonist, Adelaida, goes through in the midst of the political and social conflict that the oil country experienced in 2017, with a wave of protests against the Government of Nicolás Maduro that lasted for four months.
“The entire world is at risk of living under these authoritarian regimes,” says Reyes when explaining the importance of this story.
The actress believes that “Venezuela has been cornered for many years so that it cannot think or digest what has happened,” and that is why people found in art a way to tell their story, as happens with It’s still night in Caracas.
“This film is in honor of Venezuela, but it is also a warning to the world that we are at a point in humanity in which authoritarian governments, from the right and the left, from the north and the south, are becoming stronger with our polarity,” he says.
Bridge between Venezuela and Colombia
The 39-year-old actress from Bogotá believes that the preparation to play Adelaida was one of the most complex and profound of her professional career.
With a mostly Venezuelan cast, Reyes worked for a month alone to achieve an accent similar to that of the other actors and studied the recent history of Venezuela to represent the protagonist “with dignity.”
“I believe that there are no two countries in the world more brotherly than Venezuela and Colombia. We share our history,” says Reyes, who has a very close bond with that country because half of his family lives there.
“I was impressed that being so close to my Venezuelan family, to the country as a border neighbor, to the culture, to what we share, I did not know so many things about what happened and continues to happen in Venezuela,” she says.
Reyes achieved international fame in 2019 with his participation in the film Terminator Dark Face (Terminator: Dark Fate2019), but recognizes that entering Hollywood is a complex task for Latin actors due to the roles they are usually assigned.
“There are millions of Latinos in the United States and in the world who want to see themselves in those great productions that reach the most remote room of the smallest town in our countries,” he explained.
Regarding the artistic industry in Colombia, he highlighted the place that music occupies with singers like Karol G or Shakira, but he said that there is still a need to conquer more spaces in cinema.
“Colombian cinema is in an enviable historical moment,” but “filmmakers, producers and actors need to have better communication with the audience and understand why we are not finding ourselves in theaters.”
Reyes presided over the Colombian Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences in the period 2023-2025 and is now focused on other work: in March she premiered the comedy High capacitiesfinished recording a film with Gael García Bernal that she hopes to release in early 2027 and is the producer of a fiction that focuses on a Colombian prison.