The first time Ángeles Cruz encountered death she was 9 years old. In that first meeting, when her father died, she only “surrounded” her, she remembers, not confronted her. That loss of hers left her distraught and in a silence that she could not share with anyone other than her younger brother. It was not until 2020 that she saw death in her face again, in that “fateful, pandemic and painful” year for many people. That “irrational fear” that she had felt before, the one that made her tell herself “I don’t want to lose anyone else,” had returned to her, but that time she decided not to turn around and face it. That’s how she wrote Valentina or serenityher second feature film, in which she faces her own grieving process, the one that she had kept silent about as a child and that she can now express, like an embrace of death and life based on the language of childhood.
“I decided to speak from childhood, about how children are alone when someone is lost. Adults grieve, people move on with life. I wanted to write how we process these absences and it was important to do so from childhood,” explains Cruz, the director. wildebeest savi of the State of Oaxaca.
Valentina or serenityhis second feature film after Mixtec knotrecognized as Best First Feature at the 2022 Ariel Awards—, will have its international premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on September 8, while in Mexico it will be at the Morelia film event, to be held during the month of October.
Valentina loses her father in an accident in the river. Not satisfied with the explanation for her death, she searches for him everywhere. Not finding him, she becomes a lonely girl, her family and her time will help him accommodate her absence and overcome her grief.
The director says that in 2020, when she finished a first version of the script, her brother, who accompanied her during the loss of her father and who inspired one of the main characters in the film, fell ill with covid and died from it. In Mixtec knot He had already addressed trauma, loss and death, among other topics, but not in as personal a way as in this film. That fear drove her to face death. “I decided to talk about how painful it is, about loneliness, also about the sense of humor, about laughing about it. Also that life goes on and will continue; and we are going to accommodate those absences, to continue laughing, running and enjoying,” adds the director.
Alfred Hitchcock, in one of his legendary phrases, recommended not working with children on a set. There are many actors, actresses and directors who have recognized the difficulty of this task. However, Cruz admits that it was a joy for her and that she loves working with them. She admits that working with Danae Ahuja Aparicio, the protagonist, was a “loving and understanding” process in which the nature of childhood was respected. This, in a dynamic of work through games, was the north for what the film sought to convey.
“Childhood is a sponge that is discovering the world and in this it is up to [a Valentina] his first pain, how to deal with loss from his early years. No one is ready to lose someone, no matter how old you are. The film deals with friendship, with nature and, furthermore, it was about putting myself in that fragility, in those shoes, of not knowing what direction life is going to take and that you can hold onto a small breeze, an ant. , of a strength, with very simple things from their daily lives,” says Cruz.
Cruz also proposes an approach to Mixtec, language and communication with nature and living beings, in addition to the sense of community, based on metaphors that are part of the dream world in that hustle and bustle between life and death that he proposes for the film. . “It’s part of looking for that language in which he can meet his father. It is understanding that when someone dies or loses a loved one, that place where they lost their life becomes a place of respect. In 2020 we couldn’t get together, we couldn’t say goodbye to many people. Accompaniment is survival, it is strength. In rural communities we are one with nature, with the ants, with the texture of the wood and we share that with the community because it gives us a sense of belonging,” says the director.
The film benefited from the Incentive for Audiovisual Creation in Mexico and Central America for Indigenous and Afro-descendant Communities (ECAMC), a “small” incentive in relation to what the film industry spends, says Cruz, but “very powerful” in terms of allowing indigenous communities to make films. “I know that there is resistance to making this cinematographic world more diverse. From the communities we have powerful stories to tell and we also have to get them out into the world. The world has the right to know them just as we know what is outside. Cinema changed me and when I saw a movie from another country, it made me find my reflection. I hope that our cinema can make other people feel or experience the same thing,” Cruz concludes.
More Latin American cinema in Toronto
The Toronto Film Festival also has the presence of other Mexican films. Michel Franco, who premiered his most recent film sundownreturns to Canada with a new work titled Memory, starring Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard. Another present at the festival is the director Alejandro Lozano, with The taste of Christmas, a film produced by Salma Hayek and starring Mariana Treviño and Andrés Almeida. The Mexican representation is complemented by Mariana and Santiago Arriaga, who are making the international debut of the co-production with Spain titled open sky. While Mexican director Carlos López Estrada co-directs a documentary about rapper Lil Nas X.
From the south of the continent, the new film by Argentine Paula Hernández is presented, The wind that sweeps awayand his compatriot Rodrigo Moreno who premieres The criminals. Likewise, on the part of Chile, Felipe Gálvez’s film, The settlers —chosen by the South American country as its Oscar bet—will continue its international tour in Toronto, along with the films The supreme (Colombia), Pedagogy (Brazil) and The wild woman (Cuba).
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