[1] She is the second daughter of the marriage of  Bertha Riestra.,[2] a psychologist and cultural promoter and José Luis Cuevas,[3] a visual artist, whom had great influence in the on the early education of Ximena: “as a small child I was next to his drawing table, fascinated to see all those lines with their own life somehow(...)” [4] After living with her family different places such as Mexico City, Cuernavaca, Paris, and New York, Cuevas decided work in cinema, first as an assistant and later on, she continued to work with directors such as Konstantinos Costa-Gavras, John Schlesinger, John Huston, and Arturo Ripstein.

[5] At the beginning of the 80s, motivated by the path open by Pola Weiss, Andrea di Castro y Sarah Minter, Cuevas started to consider experimental cinema a possibility for her artistic exploration, founding the collective Cosa Nostra in the 90s along with Rafael Curquidi, Doménico Campelo, Eduardo Vélez, and others, this was a kind of “intervention mafia” that pretended to insert film situations out of context.

After the projection in the Anthropology Museum in September 1992, this group was critically acclaimed by the writer Jorge Ayala Blanco on his article “Viva el Post Cine”.

[6] Cuevas' work is most known for its subtle irony of evaluating contemporary society and exposing the incongruity between social customs and beliefs versus the reality of living using a combination of truth and fiction.

[8] She deconstructs myths of the "typical middle-class Mexican family", heteronormative relationships, concepts of beauty, through parody of the ridiculousness of their traditional portrayal in popular culture.

[6] In 2011, Cuevas announced that she would no longer be making films of social commentary, but instead was working on a project in Guerrero dedicated to the conservation of sea turtles.