If Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero have been adept at showing how families have been pulled apart by violence in Mexico, it’s fitting that they can now see their films a bit like relatives, now making a triumphant return to Sundance after their Audience Award-winning 2020 film “Identifying Features” with the no less searing drama “Sujo.”
“When we were writing “Identifying Features,” our main question was, what leads a young man to commit acts of brutality and extreme violence?” Valadez said of their prior film, which tracked a mother left without many answers in searching for her son, believing he crossed the border for work. “And with ‘Sujo,’ it’s the opposite question. How would it be possible for a child and a young man to escape the cycle of violence? So it’s a conversation.”
Their latest is bound to spark many more as it follows its title character (played as a four-year-old by Kevin Aguilar and Juan Jesus Varela as a teen) from the earliest part of his youth through his teenage years, largely left in the dark about his father Josue, who was killed when he was a child. He is reluctantly taken in by his aunt Nemesia (Yadira Pérez), who simply tells the child Josue “has returned to the animals,” too young to know that rather than referencing the coyotes outside their hideout in the middle of the wilderness, she is really referencing the cartels that plunged their tenterhooks into him when he was a boy. Nemesia wants nothing to do with the past, including Josue’s car, which could actually be of use to her, but Valadez and Rondero show the ramifications of making that decision for Sujo, who in knowing nothing of his father’s affiliations could accidentally stumble back into them himself, though in being raised by Nemesia, he also has an outlook that’s starkly different from other men of his generation who see no future but one in the cartel. Shrewdly, the film rarely depicts what Nemesia hopes Sujo never sees yet nonetheless shows the pervasive influence of the brutal criminal underworld on all facets of their lives, even when living miles from civilization in the furthest reaches of the city.
A truly exceptional drama that itself breaks the cycle of how such stories are told about this desperate situation while wringing tension from whether Sujo himself can break the one he finds himself in, the film took audiences’ breath away at its premiere in Park City in Friday and Valadez and Rondero graciously spoke about making films in their community and building characters alongside the people they cast, as well as invoking the magic in their hometown that they’re able to bring to the surface amidst stories that reflect the harsh realities they live with.
For “Identifying Features,” I remember the process involved interviewing a lot of people to help shape the story. Was that the case here as well?
Astrid Rondero: Yeah, that’s something that we really enjoy, the process of casting in these communities because you get the chance to hear a lot of stories, and that gives you a tapestry of what’s happening there, the dreams of these kids, and how they cope with having to migrate, or to stay. Sometimes they are part of organized crime, because there’s no way out, and it had a lot to do with our research, talking with young people.
You strenuously avoid depicting violence and migration, however, in favor of showing the effects of it. Does that force you to come up with a more creative narrative?
Astrid Rondero: It was trial and error, because that’s something that perhaps we had more clear with “Identifying Features,” because it’s a point of view of a mother who’s absolutely a victim, and in this story, Sujo is a victim too, of course, but he begins to start getting entangled in acts of [criminality], so we felt at some point that it would be stronger for us to portray this character who’s really just growing up. That’s another thing that we really love about this story, because we think even though you’re not from Mexico and you’re not from a small village, there’s a lot of things that are really relatable for everybody who grows up.
Was this narratively tough to crack, as far as figuring out how much time you’d spend during these different phases of Sujo’s life?
Fernanda Valadez: That was one of the most difficult parts, both in the writing and also in the editing, because we were constantly asking each other how much [time we should spend] in childhood, how much in adolescence, how much in Mexico City. That was a struggle, because at some point, we were so in love with the characters that it was difficult to take scenes outwe began with almost a three-hour film in the editing, and it was like, “Oh my God, we need to cut this out,” but yeah, that was the challenge.
How did you end up finding these wonderful actors?
Fernanda Valadez: It was a combination of processes. [Yadira Perez, who plays] Nemesia and [Karla Garrido, who plays] Rosalia are both professional actors, so with them it was regular casting, but with the children, they were really young, so we had a team of talent scouts that went to kindergartens and just talked to the parents to explain that we were going to shoot. In the end, we had a pool of kids that we spent some time with, we met parents that were playing with them, and in the end, [Astrid and I] were divided in our favorites. Astrid’s favorite was always Kevin [Aguilar], the one that ended up playing little Sujo, but he was cast originally as Jai, the other little boy. On the first day of shooting, the one that was [originally] Sujo, said, “I don’t want to play with you anymore. I’m just fed up with this.” So Astrid said, “I told you, Kevin was the right one.” And he immediately became Sujo. [laughs]
In the “Meet the Artist” video, you mentioned that it was special watching them grow up in front of the cameras. What was it like to see?
Astrid Rondero: For the kids, it was really shocking. It was just a matter of four or five weeks that they began to understand completely what we were doing, and they were asking specific questions about their characters. The approach with them was just to play, [giving simple directions like] “you have to go to this place and this woman’s going to come, and she’s going to say this.” It was just like a game. They were four years old, but they began to ask questions regarding the characters, especially Kevin, the one who’s portraying Sujo as a child and it was amazing for us to see how quickly these kids understood what you needed, so it was really, really, really something special.
And with Juan Jesús Varela, the young Sujo, it was really powerful to see him getting better at his craft because he started with “Identifying Features.” He’s been working on his trade lately, going to drama classes and things like that and it was very interesting to see him getting more mature in what he does, and especially in Mexico City, at some point we felt like we were just witnessing him coming to Mexico City and struggling to become what he wanted to become. So it was a very, very, very interesting process, very different from whatever we’ve done before and it was very beautiful to work with all of [the cast].
What was it like to scout locations for this?
Astrid Rondero: We always shoot in Guanajuato. It’s my hometown.
Fernanda Valadez: For both of us, but I know those places from childhood. My parents loved to just walk in the countryside, and we know a lot of the people in the communities, so for almost 15 years now, we’ve been scouting locations there and for us, scouting is almost a part of writing because when you get to know the places, you get ideas. For this one, we also spent quite a lot of time scouting and then we said, “Okay, here we’re going to build a house,” so Nemesia’s house was completely built, as some of the other places and it was a mix of taking from reality, but also adding fiction to that reality, and it was a very enjoyable process.
There are some real moments of magic out there which are unexpected given the sense of reality in this, such as this great cut where it seems like the key is unlocking the sky. Was that a part of this from the start?
Astrid Rondero: It was from the first draft. I wanted to tell the story of this very strong woman helping this boy, but this strong woman is also a strange creature. That’s why she lingers in that place all alone, and she’s so powerful and in a very feminine way, like Mother Nature, so we felt like she had some connections that aren’t necessarily real. And all of this is seen through the eyes of a boy, so everything connected. When we were shooting the scenes, and what was more magical about doing it in the moment was seeing that there were a lot of very inspiring and mysterious things that don’t really need to be just magical, they are in the nature [already]. That’s something in Mexico, there’s a lot of stars, a lot of animals, so it’s a mysterious thing anyway.
You also use space in a way that is really astounding — who’s in a room and who’s left outside, and who’s within a frame and what’s left out. What it’s like to think in those terms as you’re approaching the camera work for this?
Astrid Rondero: We always want to think [about that] when we are writing. We’re really self-conscious of where the camera will be, so it really helped us to shape the story. It’s something that is not separate from us. When we’re writing, we’re always thinking from which side are we looking this story, and that helps us a lot, especially now that we were co-directing together, so we were really careful in doing storyboarding the whole film, then while we were shooting. It really helped us out to communicate with others, and to…
Fernanda Valadez: To have agreements before we got to the set. It was a long conversation, of course with the cinematographer, so if a shot didn’t come out as expected, we already had an idea of “Well, we can do this other thing, because that was the objective of the scene.” The pre-production for us is where most of the creative stuff happens.
Not necessarily from scene to scene, but did you shoot this in relationship to the age of the character?
Fernanda Valadez: No, with the children, we did try to have a certain order, at least in blocks. For example, with the little child, the parts that were scary, where Aurelio came in and [Sujo] should be scared, all those were put in a week, so he would have the experience of relating to this man, and it was kind of a game with him. But for the other parts, we had some parts of the ending first and then the beginning — it was all just aiming to have more time with the children, so the children wouldn’t have to work more than four to six hours a day and if something happened with the children, then we could go back again and reshoot or reshape whatever we had intended with them.
What’s it like to get this to Sundance?
Fernanda Valadez: It’s amazing. Really, we are very happy. Every film is like a bet and a coin in the air, and you don’t know how it’s going to end up. When we were finishing the editing, we felt happy with it, but then Sundance took the film, and it was just such happiness.
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