In the opening minutes of “Papá Melissa,” Melissa Hackerman remembers it feeling as if she was walking into a cave to experience her rebirth, a new name coming to her in her dreams after she began her physical transformation into a woman to match what she had long felt inside. A lot of things in Melissa’s life appear as if they cannot be explained except to say they came naturally – her partner Claudia recalls how she was taking care of Melissa when she was sick and after a surreptitious kiss, the two became inseparable, never once needing to call each other a girlfriend before they were a couple, and their kids not thinking ever to question Melissa in spite of growing up in a culture with a binary understanding of gender.
Yet a more complex portrait emerges in Sophia Stieglitz’s radiant profile of the family living in Mexico City where accepting Melissa came instantaneously, but an understanding is something they continue to work at even after two decades together, just as it would be for any partner in a constantly evolving family. Fittingly, the Cruzmanjarrez clan gets by selling hair braids at street markets, a reflection of their own tightly knit bonds as well as their spiritual beliefs when the kids have been brought up to believe that they should never cut their hair when it was initially seen as a sign of a healthy birth according to their indigenous Mexica roots. Being homeschooled, they haven’t been culturally conditioned to think there’s anything different about the way they live, appearing more curious and compassionate towards the world around them, but that creates its own obstacles when they have to wonder why there isn’t a greater acceptance of Melissa outside the walls of their home and Melissa and Claudia’s own connection to traditional gender roles is fluid, with Claudia noting that when Melissa is the one to feel the need to glam up, she often feels like the man in the relationship.
The recurring performances of Mexica dances by members of the family throughout is a lively reminder of the spirit driving them, but also an expression of a family that never stays stills as Stieglitz’s years spent with them captures growth not only with time but soul-searching. “Papá Melissa” may be Stieglitz’s directorial debut, but it is far from her first time behind the camera as an accomplished cinematographer, most notably lensing Rebeca Huntt’s sensational 2021 autobiography “Beba,” and the slightest emotional shifts practically explode off the screen given the light she shines on them. The film is making its world premiere this weekend at the L.A. Latino International Film Festival and on the eve of the screening in the heart of Hollywood at the Chinese Theater, Stieglitz and Constanza Castro, one of the film’s producers, spoke about a truly life-changing experience for the filmmakers chronicling the Cruzmanjarrez family and bringing all of their dynamics to the screen in full flourish.
How did this come about?
Sophia Stieglitz: Well, it all started with a hunch. This moment in my life where the world was going through a complex time, right before the pandemic, and I was too and this family really resonated with me when I met them. I felt enchanted and I felt I needed to get to know this family more and channel this story. The more I met with them, the more inspired I felt. It’s a family that has a lot of substance and their story is so layered that it really captured me and that’s how we decided to embark on this crazy adventure.
Constanza Castro: Which was a six-year adventure for you.
How long has it been for you, Constanza?
Constanza Castro: I’ve been involved in the film for about three-and-a-half years. And Sofi and I know each other from school and had always stayed in touch. She brought this movie to Doménica [Castro] and I. We have a company called 271 Films, and Doménica immediately was like, “This is exactly the kind of story [we should be involved in]. I don’t know what story we’re telling yet. But we’re going to figure it out.” Since then we’ve been on a creative producing journey with Sophia, honing the story and figuring out the threads of ultimately five years of footage and it’s been such an honor to be able to participate in such a strong story of family acceptance and love and empathy. And it has been truly enchanting to actually get to know the family because like when I met them [midway through the shoot], I felt like I already knew them because I had been working on the film with Sophia, but they didn’t know me, so getting to know them has been such a treat to really see like the love and family unit that they have, which is rare.
This may speak to the end of the filmmaking process, but how do you open a film like this? The introduction really does a wonderful job of setting into motion the complexities of this family while giving Melissa center stage.
Sophia Stieglitz: The beginning was a challenge as it is in every movie, and in this case, this documentary didn’t have a script when we started off. The first couple of years was research in the sense that we were finding the story, getting to know the family and the story was unveiling itself before the camera and in the process, we had a couple of different beginnings. It wasn’t until Salvador Pérez Garcia, who is also a fellow AFI graduate from our generation came on as a supervising editor and really helped us create a very cohesive narrative. What I learned the most about working with Salvador was how important it was to unveil the layers of the story little by little. It resonated with me because that’s how my personal journey with a family has been, so it made sense that we would give the audience a beginning where we would like slowly start giving you the information and unveiling all the layers.
There was so much to tell. One of the cuts, for example, had a lot much more about the kids and their dreams and aspirations and the kids grew up in these four or five years so much and changed so much that it made sense to talk about the root of it all. It definitely was a conversation in the editing room to [ask] what is the through line and how much do we spend with Melissa, with Claudia, and with the kids to create the really right balance so that it also wouldn’t [divide into] threads that maybe we wouldn’t be able to resolve. But we actually had the end before we had the beginning. It was interesting in that sense because we knew that the kids were great and they have a great bright future in front of them.
Constanza Castro: The kids are just so incredibly sweet and kind and fun and curious, and like Sophia said, I think a lot of [the structure] came from how their ideas changed. Even the three-year difference when you’re nine and then you’re 12, it changes your perspective, so we wanted to protect that [idea of] them changing and their ideas changing a little bit as well.
Sophia, was there anything that changed your ideas about this as far as the story you wanted to tell?
Sophia Stieglitz: Definitely, I wasn’t really sure what I what the story was at the beginning. And a lot of things changed me from meeting this family on a personal level. Melissa also invited me to go to the Lakota reservation where she had been praying since the ’80s at and where three three of her children were born. That’s where I met my partner and I ended up getting married and having a child, so that obviously changed my life a lot and I’m very grateful that I just went with the adventure and Melissa was so open to tell the story together [with the family]. It’s my directorial debut as well. I’ve been working as a cinematographer for many years now, and it was really a new adventure for me. I’m definitely not the same person.
Rebecca Huntt had told me what an important person you were to bounce things off of when she was making “Beba,” and I know that was a different dynamic when she was directing her own story with you behind the camera, but what was it like working with another cinematographer Gabriela Reyes Fuchs on this?
Sophia Stieglitz: In a way, the sisterhood we created was very similar. With Constanza and Doménica, we became partners, also accomplices, and it was very interesting for me to work with another cinematographer because I have been working as a cinematographer for so long. It happened naturally and [Gabriela, the cinematographer] was the link between the family and me. Her body of work is really beautiful and I felt very inspired by it and then working together. There were moments in which I really wanted to have the camera because the way I relate to filmmaking is connected through cinematography, but there were definitely others where Gabriela really helped me while I was concentrating more on directing and I could trust her to get that [footage]. It worked out really beautifully.
I imagine that just the act of color grading is really interesting for you since you’re pulling such emotion out of the scenes by the way that it looks. What was it like finding the right aesthetic for this, from the lenses to the ultimate colors in the frame?
Sophia Stieglitz: Yes, it came alive because of the colorfulness of the family. It was also a way where we could play a little bit in the interviews. For example, we would ask the person like, “Hey, what are your favorite colors?” And it was bold to choose these very bright, colorful lights for a simple interview. But in this world, it made sense because the family is so colorful and that’s kind of what they bring to the world with their magical braids and their business. So by the time we went to color correction, we were just heightening [what was already there] and giving a little bit more contrast. But we really knew that we wanted all these colors to pop and really like express that part of the family.
Regarding lenses, we used the Angenieux anamorphic zooms and anamorphic is its own beast. The way we can set up a frame in those lenses is very different from a spheric lens and I really wanted to bring that aesthetic to this documentary because it felt like a wider world, something beyond our eyes can see in a way, almost something spiritual. We shot everything on the Alexa Mini because in my opinion, it’s a bulletproof camera that I have relied on my whole career, so I knew it was one of the things that I wouldn’t have to worry about. But definitely this was like a big [camera] package for a documentary that we had to maintain during the whole four years that we were shooting. In the end, I’m super happy that we made those choices.
When it’s a long shoot and you clearly could keep going, was there a moment it felt right to start wrapping things up, knowing you had a movie?
Constanza Castro: Because Sophia is in Mexico and we’re in the U.S., we spent countless hours through Zoom editing together, looking at footage, exploring everything in the archives of what Sophia had documented — things that I hadn’t seen. I’m like, “Do you have this? What about this?” And it was only very recently that we watched it and Sophia’s like, “I think this is it. Watch it.” Sent us a cut and Doménica and I watched it, and we’re like, “This is it. I don’t know what else to add. I don’t know what else to change.” And it felt so good when we finally were like, “We have we have a movie and we’re going to put it out in the world.”
What’s it like getting to premiere it at L.A. Latino Film Festival?
Constanza Castro: I’m so excited, and I want to say that LALIFF has been incredibly supportive of the project. We submitted the film to LALIFF Works in Progress in connection with Amazon and we’re the recipient of a grant to be able to get the movie to the finish line, so this premiere is really a no brainer, full of heart, full of support and we’re just really grateful to Diana, to Jorge, to everybody at LALIFF.
Sophia Stieglitz: We’re super excited to finally share it with the world and on such a beautiful cinema. That’s one of the most exciting things. The whole family is going to be there, presenting the film with us and [the excitement is] just contagious. The kids are like, “Wow, our movie is going to be on Hollywood Boulevard!” So it’s all good vibes and happy thoughts right now and we’re really, really happy to participate.
“Papá Melissa” will screen at the L.A. Latino International Film Festival on May 31st at 5:45 pm at the TCL Chinese Theaters.