Tatiana Huezo, Santiago 2024In Conversation with Tatiana Huezo Cristóbal Escobar January 2025 Interviews Issue 112 As part of the retrospective dedicated to Tatiana Huezo1 at the 28th edition of the Santiago International Documentary Festival (FIDOCS), the Mexican-Salvadoran filmmaker shares with us her vision and trajectory, expanding reflections on the possibilities of audiovisual language while highlighting the political impact of her work. Under the Ruizian premise ‘cinema has yet to be fully invented,’ the following masterclass and conversation with Huezo (moderated by Camila Donoso, Constanza Lobos, and FIDOCS’s Programming Team) creates a space for dialogue sparked by her own work and philosophy.2 – C.E. Masterclass at FIDOCS School We’d love to hear about your journey as a film student and how you began making your first films. Well, I studied at a Mexican film school called the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC) many years ago. I think I joined in 1994, and my time there was long – almost eight years. The school was flexible back then, and the best part was that each year you made a short film and experimented in all areas: sound, scriptwriting, directing, cinematography. This practical approach is fantastic for learning, making mistakes, and overcoming them. When I was at the CCC, the focus was primarily on fiction, which I think is a significant mistake. Film schools should start with documentary because it frees your perspective and teaches you how to move the camera and connect with others. Fiction, on the other hand, can be restrictive, especially if you’re not aware of the freedom that documentary offers. The first thing I wrote at the CCC was a short fiction script, just three to five pages, about a woman working in an aquarium and a young man obsessed with her. He was a peculiar boy, non-verbal, with some sort of syndrome, and he decided to kidnap her to take her to the sea. He even made mermaid tails for both of them. That short film was a failure – I never finished it. I remember feeling deeply sad, and one of my professors back then told me: “When you don’t finish a film, it’s like having a dead child, and you have to bury the dead.” That metaphor stayed with me for a long time. I realised that films are like children – long, complex, painful, yet beautiful processes. When you first present a film, it’s like giving birth; you share it with the world, and it starts walking on its own. To move past that failure, I made another short film, this time without asking for permission. I shot it with my neighbours, my sisters, and a few classmates. Back then, we didn’t shoot on video, and I no longer had access to the school’s cameras. There was only a dusty 16mm Bolex camera that nobody wanted to use. I lived in a rooftop room where I filmed it. I gathered scraps of expired film from a lab, pieced them together, and shot with those. I had maybe 20 minutes of footage, just one and a half cans of film, and I made a seven-minute short. Every shot was practically a single take. What I mean to say is, you have to get up and keep going. That short film was my way of healing and making my first real film. In your first short film, you worked with your neighbours and family – people you knew well. That sense of familiarity seems to permeate all your other works. How do you approach the places and people you film? I’d like to quickly show you the maps I use to find the dramatic structure for my films. Here’s the map I used for my first feature, El lugar más pequeño/The Tiniest Place (2011).3 The film is about a small town called Cinquera, which was destroyed by the army during the civil war in the 1980s in El Salvador. The town literally disappeared from maps and was abandoned. It was a guerrilla town where the resistance had risen, and the government crushed them. Ten years later, seven families returned to their village to sow life back into this place – their place. This film speaks about what happened in that town, told from the present day, through the daily lives of the characters and their testimonies that take us back to the past. Map for El lugar más pequeño/The Tiniest Place I needed a structure to capture their daily lives. My idea was to show three days in the life of these families. The map started as a brainstorm of the most powerful experiences I had during my fieldwork. For example, I decided that the first day would focus on the three main families. But even then, another theme – insomnia – emerged. One character, “La Pulguita,” [little flea] had an altar in her house and at night, she would always talk to her daughter – a daughter who had died, a guerrilla fighter, the first child in the village killed by the army. They did horrific things to her body – she was tortured. One day, I went to have coffee at La Pulguita’s place, and while she was watering the plants, without me asking anything, she began recounting the moment her daughter was killed. It was brutal. It was brutal to imagine and visualise how her daughter was killed through images. It had a tremendous emotional impact on me, and that’s when silence appeared as a theme. I didn’t know what to do. After recounting her daughter’s death, she was in a strange trance, her gaze somewhat lost, and a heart-wrenching cry left us both in silence. I didn’t know what to say because there wasn’t much to say after such a brutal story. There was a very uncomfortable silence on her face, and the word “silence” became perhaps the first powerful word in my notebook. Later, when I returned to Mexico and started brainstorming and reflecting on everything that had happened during this trip, I knew that silence was at the centre of the film. There would be no moment more powerful than that. That is the heart of The Tiniest Place. Your films often explore political violence in Mexico, but through a tender, intimate lens. How do you approach this balance? Yes, well, the stories of violence I have told about Mexico speak of one of the many realities in the country, but Mexico is also a very bright place, with beautiful people who embrace you, and with immense strength and resilience in general. It’s not that I decided to tell stories about violence; rather, these stories arrived in my life in a unique and direct way. My first feature film, The Tiniest Place, is a story filmed in El Salvador, in the village where my paternal grandmother was born. This story entered my life when I went on vacation to visit her. She told me I should go see the village where she was born, so we made that trip to Cinquera. Arriving in that town was a powerful experience. I went out for a walk and had an encounter with an elderly woman on the street. She called me Rina and told me I hadn’t changed at all, that I looked exactly the same. It was very strange. I told the woman she was mistaken, that I wasn’t Rina. Later, I arrived at the village church and saw a collage of a military vehicle on the wall, portraits of young guerrilla women who had died in the war – a bombardment of images and sensations that became the driving force for making this film and understanding what had happened in that place. Seeing those brown-skinned young women on the wall, with eyes like mine, made me reflect on all those people my age and this war that I hadn’t lived through. That’s how this film was born. Tempestad (2016)4 also came into my life in a unique way. One of the protagonists of this film is a dear friend, Miriam [Carbajal], who also wanted to study film. Many years after we had met, when I returned to Mexico from Spain, she came to visit me. She was very sick, with part of her face paralysed. We hadn’t seen each other for about 10 years, and it was overwhelming to see her burdened by that darkness, those traumas – something we couldn’t even verbalise during that meeting. She had been in prison, and shortly after our encounter, she sent me a bunch of texts and poems she had written while incarcerated. I remember my hands sweating as I read them, asking myself, “What did they do to her? What happened to her in that place?” That’s when I decided to call her and propose meeting again. She shared some of the experiences that had changed her life forever. I asked Miriam if she was willing to share her testimony, and she said yes. That’s how Tempestad was born. Each film has its own story. The Tiniest Place Tempestad How do you work with the logic of testimony? It would be interesting to know more about your approach to documentary work and the time and closeness that these conversations require to speak from the place your films speak. The key is being able to be close to the other person, looking them in the eye, listening to them, and accompanying them on the journey the interviewee is going to take. In this case, after the first hour and a half, the interview process with Miriam became therapeutic, and she began to hear her own voice. The tone of her voice and the conversation became very introspective. At that moment, the character appeared as if speaking to herself, and that tone became a very characteristic element of the film. So, I would say that establishing a connection with the other person is essential to enter these intimate spaces and deepen the conversations. Just like The Tiniest Place, this is a film born from a tragic event that happened in the past, and through the interview, one has the opportunity to explore that tragedy before shooting the film. There’re also metaphors in your films that help you visually narrate these difficult moments. Cinema is generative; it constructs a cinematic truth. When we make documentaries, we have an enormous responsibility, of course, with the characters’ stories, their testimonies, and the veracity of those testimonies. But then, the construction of the story is an artifice, and there are many elements one uses to build a film. For example, when films are based on a tragic event that happened in the past, I usually write a script and a map – a kind of dramatic structure with the cornerstone elements of the project that guide me during filming. However, during the shoot, a very strong intuition awakens, and things often change, even more so in the editing process. But I always like to have a starting point to begin writing the film. The beginning is simple. The ending is the challenge. Often, the ending reveals itself along the way, and that creates a lot of uncertainty for me. For instance, when I went to do fieldwork in my grandmother’s village for The Tiniest Place, the characters began to emerge. Once I got there, I noticed there were many fireflies. The soccer field, which was surrounded by jungle, was full of fireflies. That’s when I thought the end of the film had to involve the fireflies, especially because the locals conveyed the idea that the village was inhabited by ghosts – the young people who had died in the war. All of that made me feel that these ghosts are here, they are light, and the fireflies evoke that presence. Tell us about the transition from documentary to fiction in your more recent films, starting with Noche de fuego/Prayers for the Stolen (2021)5 Prayers for the Stolen was my first fiction film, and it came to me as a commission, as a proposal. But I should start by saying that, in all my films, this distinction between fiction and documentary bothers me a bit. For me, cinema is cinema – either a film captivates you, or it doesn’t, regardless of genre. Noche de fuego is based on a book by Jennifer Clement, called Prayers for the Stolen in English (Ladydi in Spanish). At that time, I had just finished Tempestad, and after that experience, I felt emotionally drained, exhausted from dealing with so much pain. But this project crossed my path, and I couldn’t say no: it’s the story of three girls growing up in a violent context, amidst poppy fields, drug trafficking, and the constant psychological pressure from colluding security forces. The characters are fascinating, and the story focuses on the transition from childhood to adolescence, which is a key part of the book. My producer gave me free rein to adapt the book however I wanted. Prayer for the Stolen The biggest difference compared to documentary filmmaking is that in fiction, everything has to be invented. We had to create all the settings: wind with fans, rain with water tanks, even paint moisture stains on the walls. It was a fascinating process, but with a very different production approach. The crew was around 100 people. All my other films had been made with teams of six to nine people. The casting process was also interesting. For instance, the lead girls are campesinas (rural children). I didn’t think it would be right to bring in child actors from the city to this rural, mountainous environment – they might get sick walking barefoot or be unwilling to wade into the icy river. I preferred to find campesina girls, who ultimately became the heart of the film. The massive machinery behind the production could fail, but the girls couldn’t. We built their characters around their own identities, and that’s where the emotions and the film’s atmospheres emerged. Casting was a real challenge. I had the help of a wonderful coach, and together we decided that the casting would be more like an interview. I needed to understand the personal stories behind each of these girls – how their family relationships worked, their daily chores. I needed to know about their hardships and losses to determine what emotional elements I could work with, introducing them to the story without explicitly explaining the plot. Coming from documentary filmmaking, it was essential to me that they didn’t over-conceptualise or memorise a script. I didn’t want them to anticipate each scene. In essence, they were their characters. Building the roles based on the girls’ personalities was far more enriching. We worked on developing their emotional perception, and we had to go through 800 girls in the casting process to find the eyes of Ana [Ana Cristina Ordóñez González]. Ultimately, I learned from Prayers for the Stolen that I’d never work with a traditional fiction assistant again. I always need assistants from the documentary world. The method is different, the mindset is different – there’s a freedom that often doesn’t exist in tightly structured fiction teams. That’s the methodology you used in your previous films, isn’t it? Yes, absolutely. One of my requirements for Prayers for the Stolen was that the girls and the actors share essential aspects of their real-life experiences with their characters. There was immersion in the space, in the town. The girls spent three months preparing, bonding with the place and with each other; they even became best friends. So, by the time we started shooting, their friendship was real – it was already a foundation we had built. Q&A with the audience Q&A with the audience: Tatiana, I wanted to ask you something more personal, regarding the processes behind your films. How do you protect yourself from the anguish and pain these stories carry, and how do you prevent these wounds from turning into scars? Films are like children – they are alive and they leave scars. It’s inevitable. With Tempestad, I learned this when I got sick. I literally learned how important it is to cleanse the pain and darkness that we carry while doing what we do. I think a film is a life experience, and part of it stays with you forever. When you work with such difficult, painful themes, you carry them with you, and at some point, you need to cleanse yourself in order to keep working. I remember in a Q&A before anyone even asked me a question about the film, I suddenly felt like crying. I started crying, and I couldn’t recover. I couldn’t continue with the Q&A or anything. After that, I sought help to cleanse something that I had been holding inside. I needed to empty myself of a darkness I had been carrying, and that’s something very important to do when working with such topics. Q&A with the audience: How does the sense of touch affect the stories you tell? Well, I do need to touch the other, literally and metaphorically speaking. When I make my films, that means estar [being there], having a deep understanding of the other person, a daily, even archaeological, accompaniment. In the case of El eco/The Echo (2023),6 I spent four years going to this community, building a relationship with them. It’s absolute trust that is built by being there – walking with the animals, tending to the crops with them, having breakfast and dinner together. It’s estar con el otro [being there with the other] to listen to everything, to understand their relationships and their own family bonds. So, touching the other is penetrating someone else’s life. That always carries the risk of rejection, or of what happens to the other person hitting you so hard that you can’t continue, but I don’t know how to make films any other way. * * * FIDOCS School. From right to left: Antonia Girardi, Constanza Lobos, Tatiana Huezo and Cristóbal Escobar With thanks to Escuela FIDOCS coordinator Constanza Lobos, Facultad de Comunicación y Letras UDP, Camila Donoso, Antonia Girardi, and FIDOCS Programming Team. Endnotes Tatiana Huezo (1972) is a Mexican-Salvadoran filmmaker, graduated from the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC) and with a Master’s degree in Creative Documentary from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. She gained international recognition with her feature film El lugar más pequeño/ The Tiniest Place (2011), which was screened at over 80 international festivals. Her work has been widely acclaimed worldwide and awarded by the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences with eight Ariel Awards, including Best Documentary and Best Director for Tempestad (2016), which premiered at the 66th Berlinale Forum. She also received the Best Film Award for Noche de fuego / Prayers for the Stolen (2021), which premiered at Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received a special mention from the jury. El eco / The Echo (2023) is her latest film. ↩ The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. Transcription and translation by Cristóbal Escobar. ↩ In 1979, the civil war in El Salvador began, lasting 12 years and leaving more than 180,000 dead and thousands missing. The Tiniest Place recounts the testimonies of five families who, after walking for long days through the jungle, returned to their ravaged village, finding only scattered bones in the main square. Despite everything, they managed to organise, gather the remains of their dead, and move forward with their lives. Despite the nightmares and wounds of war, the peasants, former guerrilla fighters, continue to till the land and remain united to face an uncertain future. ↩ The desolation of a country ravaged by the consequences of organised crime is depicted with rawness and a particular sensitivity in Huezo’s second-feature film. Tempestad has, by now, become one of the most significant documentaries in contemporary Latin American cinema. The film weaves together the harrowing testimonies of two women who have been scarred by violence in different ways, through a captivating and painful visual narrative and staging. ↩ Prayers for the Stolen, based on the novel of the same name by Jennifer Clement, depicts a part of rural Mexico marked by the presence of drug trafficking associated with the poppy harvest. In this context, the mothers of the village seek to protect their daughters by creating hiding places and cutting their hair to make them less visible to dangers. The film follows Ana, María, and Paula, three friends trying to survive amid this reality, facing the challenges of living in a community besieged by violence. ↩ A life in close contact with nature compels one from an early age to have a very transparent view of the world. The Echo follows a group of children in a remote village in Mexico, who spend their days caring for the grandparents and animals of the town as they come to understand death, family, and the reality around them. The film portrays children that, through a wild rawness, manage to reveal the most human aspects of their characters. In these contexts, the innocent exploration and the dazzling beauty of the landscapes inevitably lead them to grow. ↩