Co-Writers/Co-Directors Astrid Rondero & Fernanda Valadez talk to Fest Track about approach, motivation, intent and style in regards to their film: “Sujo” playing the World Dramatic Competition section at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 <music>
00:26 This is Tim Waspert from Festrek on Cirque TV. I'm here in Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival.
00:31 Well, after we screened identifying features and we made identifying features, we were wondering.
00:39 It was very important for us and for our community to tell the story of the people that remain.
00:45 And these terrible sagas that happen in our country of this young man that doesn't have a way out of the violence.
00:53 So for us it was very important to find a way to portray that.
00:56 And we, Fernanda and I, were looking for films that perhaps inspired us, but we found that were more like novels about growing up.
01:06 It was very important for us to convey the time passing and how this kid manages to find a way out of this reality.
01:18 I think what was interesting for us in terms of structure was to allow ourselves to make jumps in time.
01:26 And also to use the chapters as seasons in the life of this boy.
01:32 So we could make subtle changes in terms of style, subtle changes in terms of rhythm.
01:41 And that has a way of saying that I really like. So we could make a portrait in a three-dimensional way.
01:49 So each chapter could be like the face of a three-dimensional object.
01:54 And even though of course we have consequences, it's not exactly linear.
02:00 [Music]
02:23 I guess that the landscape also helped us a lot to understand the seasons of the life of the boy.
02:30 So when we start the film, we are not with the boy, we're with the father of the boy.
02:35 But we're also using that, we're also coming back to the eyes of the boy.
02:40 For instance, the scene of him under the table.
02:42 So we really wanted to convey this feeling of how it, this violence, how the kid is receiving that violence.
02:51 So we also change it through the characters that meant something in his life.
02:56 For instance, his aunt, Nemesia, and how she sees the world in a very mysterious and mystic way.
03:05 And that was something that was important for us because she's like the moral compass of the character.
03:11 So at the end, that's why when we move to Mexico City, we are just like between many people.
03:18 It somehow becomes one of many faces in the city.
03:23 So we try to use these faces also to convey that transition in the character's story.
03:31 [Sounds of children playing]
04:00 That's the main question of the film.
04:02 And when we began wondering how the film would be, that's the question that inspired us.
04:09 How can a boy escape the cycle of violence?
04:13 In opposition to, is a boy destined to repeat the cycle of violence?
04:20 So in the writing, we began imagining the conditions.
04:26 In terms of the character, how a personality is formed that would allow for a kid to experience the context differently, but also not the context.
04:36 How the specific events in his life should be for him to be able to have an alternative.
04:43 And when we were in just production, one of the tools that we found was to cast...
04:50 We already knew that Juan Jesus would be Suko, but we weren't certain that he would also play the father.
04:56 I think that we always knew that he was going to be the character.
05:00 Because there was something that we felt like missing from identifying features.
05:05 That we wanted to know more about this boy.
05:07 So that's probably what piqued our interest in trying to work with him again.
05:12 And he's a very powerful young man.
05:16 He's very capable and he really invests all of him in the character he's making.
05:22 So we knew from the very beginning that he was going to be Suko.
05:25 [video]
05:27 [video]
05:29 [video]
05:57 We had this idea that the chapters would have their own style and their own personality.
06:02 So that allowed us to play a little bit with the genre.
06:06 So at the beginning we wanted it to feel a little bit like a thriller.
06:10 So we could feel the exhilaration of the character, the danger, the little boy's perspective beyond saving him from death.
06:19 And then we go into a more calm episode where it's more about the discovery of nature.
06:27 But we also have these scenes with Nemesia.
06:30 When we were shooting it, Fernanda and I were talking that this feels more like a horror story.
06:35 This woman saying "You're asleep."
06:37 And we felt like that was important to use that.
06:42 Because that's how life is.
06:44 Our lives are so different and there's so many tones of it.
06:48 So when you're an infant you see things in a very different way.
06:54 So that's why we love to play with genres in this film.
06:57 [video]
07:11 I think it's a journey and as long as you can make the viewer jump in that journey with you and with the character,
07:19 I think that everything should be allowed.
07:21 That means that you can go out and go in and be on his shoes and out of his shoes.
07:27 I think that's something that it's very difficult to say "I know for a fact that that's the way to go."
07:33 But you kind of feel it.
07:35 It's like a bed.
07:38 I think this is the place where you have to be to tell this part of the story.
07:43 So I don't know.
07:45 When we were writing and we had conversations with colleagues and some advisors,
07:52 one comment was we should stick to very specific rules.
07:58 And we said we don't want to use a straightjacket.
08:01 Let's do the green.
08:03 And like Astrid said, if you have to come out of the kid's perspective to tell the emotional perspective.
08:09 [music]