Mexico City /
A year after its premiere at the Venice Festival, “A Cielo Abierto” hits Mexican screens (2023), a film whose script was the first written by Guillermo Arriaga, long before Amores Perros, and made three decades later as a debut feature by his children Mariana and Santiago.
“It is the first time we have worked this way with my father. In our particular case, it was very gratifying for everyone as it was the first work that our father wrote for cinema, in 1993. And in some way, the three of us were making our debut film with A sky open. Beyond egos, we wanted to build a film that was about a family made by a family,” says Santiago Arriaga, co-director with his sister Mariana of the film already in theaters since October 17, in an interview.
Within the road movie and the coming of age, Open Sky tells the journey of two upper-class teenagers from the capital, Salvador (Theo Goldin) and Fernando (Máximo Hollander), in search of revenge against the truck driver (Julio César Cedillo) who killed their father two years ago in a road mishap ( Manolo Cardona), accompanied by his newly acquired stepsister Paula (Federica García).
Santiago Arriaga found the original text of the story in a drawer 8 years agostill typed by Guillermo Arriaga at 35 years old. His father asked him to put it on a computer. And he showed it to his sister Mariana, with whom he has been working on joint projects of short films, commercials or video clips for 9 years, and thus the filial and fraternal collaboration that resulted in A sky open was born.
“Making a film is always a challenge; in family, the titanic fact is simpler,” says Santiago.
—Does Paula’s character appear in the original script or was it developed in family negotiations?
The script was written by our father when he was 35 years old; Mariana and I were babies. And we wanted to maintain that spirit of that young writer, not of the writer with a career and many years of work. We wanted it to be in some way our movie of the three of us. Although the script was obviously adapted to some things, we wanted it to remain mostly as we found it.
ANDThe filmmaker states that, in his opinion, the basic theme of his first film is not revenge, but mourning.
Under the Open Sky is a film of mourning. His characters, as a result of the loss of a loved one, become unable to live; After two years, they have not been able to rebuild their lives. Fernando, the older brother, with this immense grief that he has, believes that revenge is the way to solve his pain, but it turns out that is not the case. The title comes from a scene where the rain represents that duel, but, finally, the open sky comes. It is a film about how each character faces pain, he explains.
—How did you and your sister construct the three protagonists?
We opened a very large casting. There were very specific things we were looking for from each other. For Salvador, we wanted him to be this character who was going through adolescence; Fernando and Paula go from adolescence to adulthood. It is a coming of age in which we wanted each one to have a different point of view. Fernando’s was impulsive, irrational, violent, wanting revenge in his duel; Paula is more observant, analytical, eager to rebuild a family. And Salvador was quieter, shy, in his need to mourn he repressed these memories of his accident, and wanted to forget it. Once we find the actors, we create dynamics with these characteristics.
In reality, the story revolves around the truck driver who caused the father’s death. How did you prevent it from becoming a kind of class struggle over how young people and this live?
The truck driver lives as he lives for a reason of mourning, He has not been able to rebuild his life for two years as a result of this accident and has the burden of the death of a person on top of him. There are like these little eggs that we leave there in the film, that give us to understand that he was married, that his family left him, that he is living in a dump and lives on memories. When these kids arrive, they see images of another era of the truck driver that is not the one reflected in their house. And about the kids, they live in that other house that their father left them, they lost the patriarch, the provider and they are trying to cope.
Well, the mother (Cecilia Suárez) is not suffering much. She has already remarried Paula’s father (Julio Bracho).
The mother, in an attempt to rebuild her life and give it a sense of normality, He married two years after the accident. The film begins with the accident on the road. And two years later, it continues when the mother has just gotten married and the stepfather and stepsister arrive at her house. So, each person goes through their grief as best they can, some are left alone for the rest of their life; and others, in an attempt to rebuild or have a sense of normality, recreate an attempt at family.
Reiterates the theme of grief. Why were you and your sister interested in it for your debut film?
There are things that are somewhat irrational in creators, I don’t know where these obsessions come from; If I try to rationalize them, I wouldn’t be able to tell you; these obsessions that you need to work on somehow, we did it through this film. I can’t tell you why, it just makes me want to talk about these topics.
The film is set in the 90s. A very particular time, you could even travel on the highway like Piedras Negras, in Coahuila, without so much danger. Why that context?
What matters in the film is not the context or the time in which it takes place, but the universal theme it addresses, these themes of grief, first love, sexuality, family dynamics, family reconstruction, loss and personally, yes, nostalgia for the 90s. Those themes It doesn’t matter that they are made in a period film, from the 1700s, they still retain universality.
What has it been like to work among brothers for this film?
Mariana and I have been working together on all projects for nine years. This, being a debut feature, has much more scope. Mariana and I have worked on four short films, we have made a significant number of commercials and video clips and we have developed this muscle together. Throughout the history of cinema, director brothers are repeated, because they share the context of life, work ethic, and in many cases, like my sister’s and mine, taste.
“And not only that. Also, directing can be a very lonely job.. Many directors sometimes fall into the role of the producer or the cinematographer or the editor; and, in the case of Mariana and me, we seem to accompany each other in this process, and more than being something merely professional, it is also something nice to see us grow together in the projects, and accompany each other and travel the world together, show the film and feel accompanied in this process.”
YVI
