The Rumberas film (in Spanish, Cine de rumberas) was a film genre that flourished in Mexico's Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and 1950s. Its major stars were the so-called rumberas, dancers of Afro-Caribbean musical rhythms. The genre is a film curiosity, one of the most fascinating hybrids of the international cinema.

Today, thanks to their unique characteristics, they are considered cult films. The Rumberas film is one of the contributions of Mexican cinema to international cinema. The Rumberas film represented a social view of the Mexico of the 1940s and 1950s, specifically of those women considered sinners and prostitutes, who confronted the moral and social conventions of their time. The genre was a more realistic approach to the Mexican society of that time. It was melodramas about the lives of these women, who were redeemed through exotic dances.

The rumberas were the dancers and actresses that swayed to Afro-Caribbean rhythms in Mexican cinema's Golden Age of the 1940s and 1950s. The term rumbera comes from the so-called Cuban rumba that was popular in Mexico and Latin America from the late 19th century to the early 1950s. Eventually new tropical rhythms such as the mambo and the cha-cha-chá displaced the Cuban rumba as the most popular Latin music genre; the rumberas adopted these new rhythms and used them in their films.

The rumberas films have their roots in various film genres. The film noir, very popular in Hollywood and other film industries in the 1930s and 1940s, can be considered their cornerstone, given the urban environment of the genre. Film noir was characterized by having among its protagonists the femme fatales, the cabaret women who aroused the passions of men and were often the source of conflict in the plot. Gloria Grahame and Rita Hayworth created film noir images of women who enjoy singing cabaret and simultaneously make men suffer. Their other base was the Hollywood musical of the 1930s, epitomized by Busby Berkeley and his famous colorful and extravagant musical numbers endowed with a deep aesthetic expression. Although not in such stylized form (due to limited budgets), rumberas films tried to imitate in their musical numbers the guidelines of the genre. Finally, the film genre was enriched by the Urban social cinema or melodramatic films, whose principal artisan in Mexico was the filmmaker Alejandro Galindo. All this mix of elements and genres can be considered the basis of rumberas film.

In the Rumberas films the main heroines are women, generally humble and naive, who, because of a bad move of fate, are forced to fall into the underworld of prostitution and get involved with gangsters and pimps. These women suffered through most of the time. The plot allowing them only a few moments of pleasure in the movie. Invariably the "sinner woman" had to find her punishment. The stars of this genre became objects of worship, but also of criticism and contempt of the hypocritical judgment of the hearings.

In general, Mexican cinema was characterized by representing the prostitute as the main figure on numerous occasions, from the good-hearted prostitute represented in Santa (1932), to the tragic prostitute reflected in Woman of the Port (1934). In the Rumberas films, these tragic heroines also danced and radiated sensuality.

The rumberas first came to the theatrical stage in the late 19th century, at the time of vaudeville and burlesque, accompanying the many comedians and buffs of Cuban origin who settled in Mexico City. From the early 20th century until the 1920s, in the age of the great Mexican vedettes of the frivolous theater (as María Conesa or Lupe Vélez), rumba dancers began to emerge. Lolita Téllez Wood is popularly considered the first dancer to popularize West Indian rhythms. During the course of the next decade, many rumberas and vedettes from Cuba came to Mexico.

The concept of the "rumbera" has been embodied in Mexican cinema since the first talkies in the early 1930s. The actress Maruja Griffel was the first to dance the rumba, in the film ¡Que viva México! (Sergei Eisenstein, 1931). She was followed by others such as Consuelo Moreno in Mujeres sin alma, ¿Venganza suprema?, Rita Montaner in La noche del pecado (1933), and Margarita Mora in Águila o Sol (1937). In addition, the Puerto Rican actress Mapy Cortés (called "The Rumbera Blanca") was famous for dancing the conga in numerous films. Lolita Téllez Wood participated in three Mexican films: El rosal bendito (Juan Bustillo Oro, 1936), Mujeres de hoy (Ramón Peon, 1936) and Honrarás a tus padres (1936), the latter directed by Juan Orol, considered the "spiritual father" of the rumberas film.