What pieces or projects have you been working on lately?
Recently, I finally developed some film I had been putting off. I had shot them during the period when I was filming and premiering a short film that I also wrote and directed. Just this August, it was shown at the Cineteca Nacional in my city (Mérida, Yucatán): “Si está en su memoria, podemos llevarle”.
To give a bit of context, at a broad level, it’s a science fiction drama with a retrofuturistic aesthetic. It tells the story of Omar, an elderly man living in a world devastated by environmental collapse, who one day comes across a commercial offering a strange promise: the chance to return to a memory and live it once more.
Looking deeper into its themes, this story emerges from a moment of realization. Often, it seems to me that what we try to hold onto are not memories, but dreams. And in that, I suppose, lies the impossibility of fully prolonging them or, at least in my experience, of fully feeling them.
Now, seeing the resulting photos —some taken on set, others off, all juxtaposed with the present I now inhabit— a multitude of symbols meet me. They punctuate and recontextualize both processes.
What did you learn (or unlearn) while working on them?
That symbols are everywhere, and if you manage to weave them into the creative process, they can enrich it immensely. One has to stay attentive to the symbols around us. Not because they are signs of the future, or because they have some superstitious power, but because they reflect what lies within ourselves, the processes happening inside.
One photo stands out, taken right after we wrapped the shoot, when I returned to the dock where we had filmed the scene that was chronologically last. I wanted to capture an insert showing how the place looked.
Ironically, that scene had been the first one we filmed. It shows our protagonist, after undergoing the procedure to return to the moment of his choice, arriving at this dock. This is where his memory takes place. In the story, for Omar, this dock and what happened there symbolize another time, better times.
That dock, in real life located in Chelem, was devastated by a strong swell caused by Hurricane Milton last October, just around the time we thought the shoot was done, without considering the extra shot we hadn’t planned for. In the end, this symbol unified the story in the fiction. The insert we shot was of the destroyed dock. In the edit, it was used as an intercut between memory and the present. The contrast is striking, reminding us of an inevitable loss, the loss of a past impression.
Later, in my reality, that symbol became something similar for me as it was for Omar: a symbol of change, though with the added fortune of being aware that change isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
What words, ideas or emotions were going through your head?
Memory. Nostalgia. Remembering. Impressions filtered like artificial light…
Of all the things we have to deal with in life, memory is perhaps one of the heaviest burdens—so imprecise, fragile, and illusory.
We constantly search within it, through narrow and seemingly crowded alleys, for impressions that won’t return: people, places, moments. Only to realize that those faces, conversations, and facades, piled up inside us, have always been, in a crude way of putting it, empty.
Behind them, there was nothing but a glimpse of the self.
The world and the impressions it leaves behind are nothing but an extension of my inner life.
Were there any conversations, movies, music, or books that made their way into that work?
Inspiration came from many directions. Radiohead’s music, especially the albums Kid A and A Moon Shaped Pool, played a big role. The stories and novels of Philip K. Dick and Bradbury. The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Brazil by Terry Gilliam. Terry Gilliam in general. Blade Runner too.
What's been the most difficult thing you've faced recently in your creative process?
Someone once told me that my characters always end up badly, that my stories oscillate between memory and tragedy. I don’t see this as necessarily bad; I’ve always thought of my stories as a way to channel feelings and emotions that might otherwise overflow, redirecting them away from the fate my characters usually meet. Yet that comment stuck with me.
Lately, now that this project is finished, I realize one of the hardest challenges has been changing direction and tone while writing. I’ve wanted to explore other genres and dive into comedy, taking my characters in a new direction. This has partly caused a creative block that has lasted this month, and I hope to move past it soon.
What is your favorite restaurant and what do you recommend we order?
Tama Shokudo. It’s a small Japanese restaurant in Mérida with a shōwa-era style. Its concept is about evoking home-style Japanese cooking. The space genuinely feels like being in Japan, and if you ever visit, the tonkotsu ramen is a must.
If your life were a movie this month, what would it be called and who would write the soundtrack?
“Untitled.” And I know you didn’t ask me this, but it would be a meta-narrative comedy, like Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation, about my creative block and the script I still haven’t named. It’s about how I give the character free will by writing that the script itself falls into its own world, letting him decide for once and steering him away from the tragic endings I usually give my characters.
The soundtrack would have to be by Beastie Boys or Plastilina Mosh, in their jazzy/funky phase.
Recommend us an artist you follow who inspires you, and tell us what you like most about their work or their way of working.
Max del Río. He’s a guy from Campeche who makes short films and recently released a feature. I think he also uploaded it online for free so anyone can watch it. It’s called La Película. His jam is comedy, but what I love most is the heart and authenticity in his work. I think his film proves that cinema can be made here in the southeast. It has jokes that are very specific to a context I know well. I still remember helping him as a kid in one of his shorts—it was a surreal and chaotic experience, one that stuck with me forever. He’s one of the people who brought me closer to cinema.
Born in Campeche in 2001, he resides in Mérida. From a young age, he found in art a way to dialogue with the world. His work explores time and narration as means of capturing what is essential to the human condition, especially through photography and the written word.