Sometimes we have to disobey in order to transcend, in order to survive.
We all face crossroads in our lives where we can retreat into ourselves, or we can hit the dance floor.
In the case of 'Fantastic Woman,' I wanted to make it a more complex animal than just a 'cause' film. Even though I was sympathizing with the character's struggle, I didn't want to be trapped at that level - it's important, but it can be quite basic.
There's something about using the cinematic device as a tool to connect with dimensions of the world that you don't know too well, you're not too familiar with. It's like a creating a bridge, or a spaceship to travel to the unknown.
In the case of 'Disobedience,' the very secretive way of life and religion and tradition that the North London Orthodox Jewish community has was a huge invitation to explore an unknown world. And also a possible trap, and I tried to overcome that by portraying it, hopefully, with great nuance and detail and texture.
I don't believe in closed scripts; I think that they should be open.
'Gloria' is a film about a fifty eight-year-old woman who is quite alone in life; however, she is quite optimistic. Nobody has much time for her, and so she regularly goes to these single adults' parties where she is looking for someone. By the end of the film, she doesn't necessarily find love, but she does find something else.
In Latin America, cinema has always been a bourgeois activity, I guess, as it is everywhere. It's just a stupidly expensive art form, and there is nothing you can do about it.
Those of us who make movies play with perception and reality; those who watch our films are responsible for making sense of it.
When you're filming, not everything is rational.
Every human society has its lights and its shadows. That's the reality of existence.
'Gloria' was a gamble.
Fashion is totally political, the icon of a political system.
The use of music in 'Gloria' is not cynical.
I had the idea that I'm going to make a trans-genre film about a transgender woman.
I learned at an early age to be socially effective while practicing disappearing.
I was always making new friends, then losing them.
When you're filming, you're blind. But if you follow what really moves you, then you operate from a place of hope: maybe that the story you're telling will resonate with whatever the world will have become when the film is ready to be born.
This idea of walls, segregation, labels, and 'You against us' and 'We are superior and you are inferior.' Which people are legitimate? Which relationships are legitimate or not? Who declares that under which authority? These are things that are hugely important.
Poetry was my 'in' to the idea that I could express myself through art.
