From Horror to Noir: Meet the Latino Directors Behind the Hidden Gems at the New York Film Festival

Nelson Carlo, Director of 'Santa Teresa & Other Stories'

Where are you from?
Dominican Republic.

What city do you call home?
I’m still searching for it.

When did you know you wanted to be a filmmaker?
Since I was a kid. When I was 8, I saw Cría Cuervos By Carlos Saura, I was in love with Ana Torrent, I saw the movie so many times that my dad had to talk to the owner of the video club, if he could give me a copy…It was a VHS in the desolated Santo Domingo from the 90s; I guess no one cared about fraud. Anyhow, I was in love with her look, and I started to fall in love with cinema.

Did you formally study film?
Yes, I studied at Universidad del Cine in Argentina, Edinburgh College of Art, and the California Institute of the Arts.

What was your inspiration for this story?
My film and its complexity comes from an urgency to start talking about violence from another realm. To explain this other space, we would have to analyze how violence has constituted the center of the signification of our societies, and how power from our political and cultural industries has exploited this as a certain type of brand (cine Latinoamericano) directed to the first world countries that enjoyed this reality. This is a factor of desire that’s quite complex, that I don’t fully understand, and I know my answers here should be short, so I just end by saying I’m investigating the shapes of violence in this movie and how we can make signification out of it, as a document but also as a constructed document, in simple words, as a lie.

What was your biggest challenge in making this film?
As banal as it sounds, because of the complexity of the production of this film, the biggest challenge was to make the voice overs work.

If you could make a film with any actor who would it be? What would be the story?
I don’t know. I don’t think things like that. I’m not very attracted to the star system; actually I believe they are part of the problem in cinema, in its capitalist face, which is lethal.

What is a movie you are embarrassed to admit you really like?
I don’t think I’m embarrassed about movies that I like at this moment. I see everything: super big productions, low budget films, experimental films. I love cinema. I wouldn’t say embarrassed but I’ve been naive before, and I enjoyed movies in the past that today I can’t believe in, especially in Latin America. I was a very huge fan of Carlos Reygadas, and these days I can’t stand his movies. He broke my heart, and I remember liking Amores Perros and Y tu mama también and today I realize that those movies killed something in [Latin American] cinema. Those examples [apply to] the country where I shot Santa Teresa, but that could easily be applied to a lot of movies in the region.

Percival Argüero, Director of 'Sânge'

Where are you from?
I was born and raised in Mexico City.

What city do you call home?
Mexico City has always been my home.

When did you know you wanted to be a filmmaker?
I was 8 years old the first time I felt really passionate about cinema. As a child, I thought I’d grow up to become a paleontologist because I loved dinosaurs. Then one night my parents took me to see Jurassic Park and it blew my mind to realize that film could bring to life such magnificent creatures. It was then that I started wondering about the extraordinary things filmmakers can do. And a few years later, when I saw Tesis, the Spanish film by Alejandro Amenábar, it hit me harder than ever that great filmmaking was not reserved for people living in the U.S.

Did you formally study film?
I’m currently enrolled at Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC), one of the two state-funded film schools in Mexico. I’m majoring in Film Directing but CCC is a truly great institution that gives students plenty of experience in every area of filmmaking, from writing to post-production.

How did the idea of this film come to you?
Sânge is my third year film school project. I knew I wanted to make a movie that could convey raw emotions, like horror and despair. But I also knew I wanted it to be about our powerful need to love and be loved. Then I read Budget Cinema, an amazing short story by Cliff R. Barlow, and I realized that its characters (a horror film buff and an Eastern-European film director who takes horror filmmaking way too seriously) could allow me to write a screenplay that would address a question that has haunted me for a long time: “What are the absolute limits of love?”

What was your biggest challenge in making this film?
The biggest challenge was to shoot a film that required many locations, a large crew and very realistic special effects in six days and with a low budget. Fortunately, I had the full support of my family, my friends, and my school, so I was able to build a team of extremely talented and generous people who had so much faith in the project right from the start.

If you could make a film with any actor (living or dead) who would it be? What would be the story?
I’d like to make a political thriller that tackled the issue of violence against women. Given the playful nature of the question, I would have loved to cast Philip Seymour Hoffman as one of the shady characters, since he would be perfect for interpreting someone who is both charming and horrific. But I really hope I can make such a film in Mexico, working with Mexican talent sometime soon.

What is a movie you are embarrassed to admit you really like?
I’m not embarrassed to admit it, but I guess it’s a bit weird that I really like The Devil Wears Prada.

Amirah Tajdin and Manuela Martelli, Directors of 'Marea de Tierra'

Where are you from?
Manuela Martelli: Chile.
Amirah Tajdin: Kenya.

What city do you call home?
M: It is very hard for me to have my home in just one city. I think I am in the process of making my home as portable and nomadic as myself.

A: I’m a bedouin, who’s lived in very many cities since childhood, so wherever I am in the moment is home – right now my notebooks are in Dubai so I guess that’s home!

When did you know you wanted to be a filmmaker?
M: When I was a kid, my grandparent gave us a VHS camera. It was the time when some people in Chile were fighting against the dictatorship, and my mother would take the camera to the protests. I grew up with this camera, and in a way I think I have always wanted to keep a camera close.

A: In high school, we watched To Kill a Mockingbird and it was such an important book in my life at the time and what I watched and how I had visualized the story and lives were so far removed from my version of their world’s! In that moment I decided this was my calling, if only to re-make To Kill a Mockingbird [laughs].

Did you formally study film?
M: Yes, I got a Fulbright scholarship to study an MFA in Filmmaking at Temple University in Philadelphia.

A: No, I studied Fine Art and majored in photography after deciding film school was too technical for me.

How did the idea of this film come to you?
M: Amirah had the idea to work around the theme of mermaids and sent me some very inspiring pictures of Japanese Ama Divers. They reminded me of an indigenous group in the south of Chile. That’s how we got into the Island of Chiloé and met one of the characters of the film.

A: Yup, and through it we found our symmetry and developed the story from there.

What was your biggest challenge in making this film?
M: For me, everything was very challenging. With Amirah we didn’t know each other at all; it was like having a blind date and doing a film at the same time. I think the big challenge was putting these two minds coming from very different parts of the world to make a film that would feel personal to the both of us.

A: Very true. It was almost surreal most of the time, but finding that common language was so crucial and we figured it out early enough.

If you could make a film with any actor who would it be? Why? What would be the story?
M: I would love to work with Meryl Streep. I think that everything she does becomes just real. I love her energy, and how she puts so much of her in her characters. Almost as if she was always standing next to them. The plot of the story…oof, that’s hard. Maybe it would be about Gabriela Mistral, the period when she lived in the U.S. and fell in love with her American secretary. It would be amazing having Meryl Streep playing Mistral.

A: Adrian Brody – there’s something about how he becomes his characters, a gentle complexity. As for the plot, I’ve always wanted to tell the story of my uncle who’s had a pretty difficult life, but he’s such a beautiful spirit, perhaps that? Adrian if you’re reading this: holla!

What is a movie you are embarrassed to admit you really like?
M: I love The Sound of Music. For a long time I felt embarrassed about it, now I just accept it is one of my inspiring films.

A: All the cheesiest chick flicks ever made between 1998-2015!