Here’s a pitch for a TV show we can get behind: it’s Peaky Blinders meets House of Cards meets Downton Abbey on Tequila. That the project, Tijuana, is directed by a woman, will be shot entirely in Spanish starring a Latino actor who also doubles as its executive producer is just the cherry on top. Hoping to sell this premise and make it a reality, actor and executive producer, David Plascencia, and director Mary-Lyn Chambers are crowdfunding to make a 15-minute short that will capture the spirit of the period story they’re eager to tell.
Based on Plascencia’s own grandfather, who was chief of police of Tijuana in the 1920s, the short film will be told from the point of view of a character inspired by Plascencia’s grandmother, a French-born woman called Carmen. Set in a time when the Mexican town was known as “Satan’s Playground,” we’ll get to see how Carmen tries to make the most out of U.S. prohibition to begin her own tequila-smuggling business. The hope is not only to tell a story about Tijuana that’s not filtered through an American lens, but to focus squarely on its strong female protagonist. As Chambers puts it in their crowdfunding campaign site: “As a female director, I am inspired to tell a story that reaches back into history and bring forward female and males character that are not there to satisfy a patriarchal sensibility, but rather to bring them to the foreground as the bold, flawed, layered 3-dimensional characters that we can know, enjoy, love, hate and cheer for.”
You can check out their full pitch for what they promise will be a gritty and dusty period piece and can support the making of Tijuana at their Seed&Spark page.