Being a film director isn’t easy. The medium is in constant flux, but when you feel that inner calling – the certainty that this is what you were born to do – you toss aside all “Plan Bs” and dive headfirst toward your goal. Reading the above, you might have guessed that I’m a director – and also a screenwriter, editor, and producer. My first feature film was Rendez-vous, on Prime Video now.
This audiovisual bug bit me during my final year of college in Mexico City. It was the late ’90s, and independent cinema was taking over international screens worldwide. Directors like Gus Van Sant, Wong Kar-wai, Alfonso Cuarón, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Danny Boyle, Kathryn Bigelow, Alejandro Amenábar, Walter Salles, Isabel Coixet – and so many others I couldn’t possibly list – filled my eyes with their stories.
Among those names, one left a particular mark on me because of his mindset: Robert Rodriguez. A true maverick, he turned doubts and fears into opportunities and action. On every DVD extra (remember those shiny discs?), he included 15 minutes of film school.
Believe me – those were, and still are, real filmmaking lessons from a Hollywood director. That’s how I started making short films and attending film festivals. I continued my studies as a screenwriter and director, began writing feature-length scripts, and tried to convince some producer to trust an enthusiastic but unknown young filmmaker.
That’s when I faced the issue every director eventually confronts: this industry had no interest in making my movie. It’s a screenplay’s default state – to remain ink on paper and never become moving images. “No” is the norm. “Yes” is a miracle – and you have to do more than pray to get it.
Faced with rejection, I leaned into directing commercials and set aside my dream of making feature films – until my foreshadowing above came to pass. What do I mean? Rodriguez’s office emailed me because the Machete director had seen two of my short films and wanted to air them on his U.S. cable channel, El Rey Network (now tell me – is that a cool name, or is that a cool name?).
Just like that, I found myself in El Rey’s offices in Los Angeles, talking with his team. They liked me, and soon I found myself putting on one of the channel’s T-shirts. I felt like Popeye the Sailor Man eating spinach – wearing it filled me with confidence and energy, reminding me of Robert Rodriguez’s core lesson: Make your movie yourself.
And that’s exactly what I did. No asking for permission. I’d produced Rendez-vous myself. I returned to Mexico and used the budget I’d set aside for a new short film to shoot a feature instead. How? Given the size of the budget, the solution in my head seemed simple: shoot the entire film in a single continuous take – no cuts. In one day. Two hours from “action” to “cut,” and I’d have a movie. The money would stretch that far.
With the courage that only naivety provides, I thought five days of rehearsal would be enough. In reality, those five days turned into three weeks of rehearsals.
I wrote a story that allowed my camera to be a fly on the wall: the silent witness to a couple’s first date after meeting online. A kind of meet-cute, rom-com movie. But there’s something I haven’t yet mentioned about my cinematic tastes: I love genre films. Horror, thriller, action, suspense – you name it.
And any director will tell you: Hitchcock’s shadow is long, and it covers us all. So I wrote a script inspired by the Master of Suspense, and what at first seems like a rom-com gradually transforms into a thriller exploring the dangers of social media and more of Mexico City’s realities.
I chose a neighborhood I deeply admire for its aesthetics and cultural value: Coyoacan. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera lived there, as did filmmaker Emilio “El Indio” Fernández – and even Luis Buñuel even used the neighborhood to shoot a sequence of The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz.
I gathered my family and friends to serve as extras. The film gods smiled on us – everything went well, and every improvisation improved the movie. That film, Rendez-vous, is streaming now, and what an adventure it was.
Talk about a dream come true.
