When Mexican director Patricia Riggen first presented her feature film acclaimed by the critic “Under the Same Moon” 18 years ago, she anticipated tears of the public and greater sympathy towards the difficult situation of migrants in the United States. But she could never have predicted the Militarized repression against migrants that happen today.
“If I did 'under the same moon' at this time, I wouldn't do so,” Riggen said in a telephone interview. “It would be dark as hell.”
The fictional drama follows Carlitos, 9 years old (played by Adrián Alonso), who lives in Mexico with his sick grandmother, while his mother Rosario (Kate del Castillo) navigates as an undocumented worker in Los Angeles. After the sudden death of his grandmother, Carlitos crosses the border alone in search of his mother, joining details of his whereabouts of his past routine phone calls.
After his debut in 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival, where he received a standing ovation“Under The Same Moon”, which was titled “The same Moon” in Spanish, was collected by [Fox] Searchlight Pictures and launched in theaters the following year. He Ruine box office records For any Spanish film in the United States at that time.
While cheerful at a few moments, thanks to Carlitos' link with a very wild migrant called Enrique (Eugenio Derbez), the story reflected the heartbreaking trip crossed by many migrants in the United States in the early 2000scounted through the eyes of a child. “He gave a human face to a statistic and a political problem,” says Riggen.
“That is why it became the phenomenon that was at that time, and now here we are,” Riggen said, referring to the ongoing ice sweeps by masked APPLICATION OF THE LAW, HEAD OF US CITIZENS and migration deportations No due process.
De Loss interviewed Riggen about the enduring impact of his film, “Under The Same Moon”, the same day he met with Derbez and screenwriter Ligiah Villalobos in a June 26 panel organized by the National Assn. of Latin independent producers. “It is the first time that we meet again, and it is an important moment,” Riggen said. “I think this movie [provides] A little hope for the Latin community. “
This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.
Almost two decades have passed since the launch of “Under The Same Moon”. How have their themes evolved? Since 2007?
Unfortunately, nothing has changed for the better. It has changed for worse. I feel that things are worse than ever. There are things that never happened before, such as deportations to external countries, or arrests without due process, arrests of people who do not identify themselves. We don't even know if they are actually ice agents.
As a member of the Latin American community, I can tell him that he has a name and is called fascism. It gives me chills, because if you are from Latin America, you immediately remember Argentina, Chile and Brazil. This is how they used to operate. They would simply come to their homes and take them. Without identification, with nothing. I would like the American people to see that, but they don't know because they had never seen it before. It is the worst case I can imagine.
When we did “the same moon”, there were thousands of unaccompanied minors. That was the original inspiration for Ligiah Villalobos, when he wrote the first draft of the film. It was an innovative film because it used to be a series of dark and depressing dark [immigration] Movies, but this was different. The film had a more moving and positive perspective. It still played super complex issues, but the intention was to show immigrants positively, good people with good values. People become immigrants out of necessity, due to poverty, violence, persecution.
If you made the movie now, The eclipsed tone Those flashes of hope?
This is how I feel right now. I would make a deep immersion like “El Norte”, because that film was another emblematic film on the subject. That was dark and hard. Then came “the same moon”, which I thought was lighter. He wanted to make a film with which the Latin audience was connected and that immigrants could see. But the tone would be different. I would make a deep immersion in the problem. I stayed away from making the film political and concentrating more on the love story with the mother-child relationship. … now I feel it's time to have more political angle. The half of the country still believes that immigrants are criminals, but being able to feed their loved one is a human right.
If you continued the movie where he left him, with Carlitos and his mother meeting, where would they be in America today?
That is what [Villalobos] And I've been working. They have approached us several times to create a series about “the same moon”, to answer that question, it will be in the television series that I hope. I feel that the country is really in tune with the difficult situation of immigrants. 1751554162That was not necessarily the case 17 years ago.
What do you think was so attractive to this movie when it was launched?
He touched universal emotional problems with which everyone could identify. You didn't need to be Mexican or have crossed the border. Love was in the center of it. I conceived it. Sometimes I have the feeling that if [Alonso] He had been a conventional actor, he would have been nominated for something, but that is the story of making Latin films. We have not been able to break the main current and it is something we are fighting every day.
I find that Hollywood, my industry, is a bit responsible for the hostility that Latinos and immigrants find as a community in the United States, our representation of Latinos has rarely been positive. We have to change things and represent the community in a positive way, not only the negative way that promotes hostility in the middle of the country.
