Iliana Sosa is a documentary and narrative fiction filmmaker based mostly in Austin, Texas. Her documentary quick “An Unsure Future,” co-directed with Chelsea Hernandez, premiered on the 2018 SXSW Movie Competition, the place it received a Jury Award for Greatest Texas Brief. She co-produced the Emmy-nominated function documentary “Constructing the American Dream” (SXSW 2019), and was area producer for the Emmy-nominated “POV” documentary collection “And She May Be Subsequent.” Sosa is presently an assistant professor within the Division of Radio-Tv-Movie at UT Austin. “What We Depart Behind” is her first documentary function.
“What We Depart Behind” is screening on the 2022 SXSW Movie Competition, which is going down March 11-20. Discover extra data on the fest’s web site.
W&H: Describe the movie for us in your individual phrases.
IS: “What We Depart Behind” follows my grandfather, Julián Moreno, as he begins constructing a brand new home in his rural hometown of Durango, Mexico. From behind the digital camera, I doc the undertaking’s progress and the every day rhythms of his life, drawing out reminiscences from members of the family as I grapple with how migration and loss have marked all of our lives.
The movie is finally a sort of love letter to Julián and his homeland. By way of voiceover that pairs with imagery of Durango’s landscapes, I mirror on my grandfather’s superstitions, my mom’s journey throughout the border, and my grandmother’s premature demise when my mother was simply a youngster. As I interweave these totally different threads, I’m in a position to construct relationships and mutual understanding with my kinfolk, unearth buried reminiscences, and finally piece collectively a fragmented household historical past. The movie honors my household on each side of the border and tells their story — the story of individuals we hardly ever see onscreen.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
IS: Rising up, my grandfather would come go to my household and me in El Paso, Texas, each month. I’ve vivid reminiscences of his journeys. He would spend hours and hours touring by bus throughout the border from his hometown in Durango, Mexico, then go to for only a day, bringing jamoncillo, chile, and Mexican sweet as presents. He would odor of earth, his palms weathered from working the land all of his life. My total household has made a dwelling by the labor of their palms. They’ve labored as housekeepers, building employees, and nannies. I’m the primary in my household to go to varsity — not to mention to grow to be an artist — and my consciousness of that privilege is baked into “What We Depart Behind’s” self-reflexive strategy.
My authentic intention in making this movie was to discover my grandfather’s work as a bracero and to convey consciousness to a interval of United States historical past that many People don’t find out about. The phrase “bracero” means “one who works along with his arms.” Braceros had been agricultural employees the U.S. introduced from Mexico throughout a brief WWII labor scarcity. Whereas within the U.S., they had been notoriously exploited for his or her guide labor after which forcefully repatriated when American xenophobia started to escalate. I needed to study my grandfather’s experiences as a bracero: his realities dwelling and shifting between nations, and his efforts to unite a household regardless of authorized, monetary, geographic, and cultural boundaries.
As my grandfather started building on a brand new home in Durango — supposed for the entire household, on each side of the border — the undertaking’s focus and strategy shifted to one thing extra private. The dynamics round this home allowed me to discover how migration has affected our household’s bonds and formed my identification. It additionally prompted me to mirror on my emotional and cultural experiences as a part of a diaspora. By way of the method of filmmaking, I used to be in a position to construct a brand new relationship with my grandfather and his homeland.
W&H: What would you like individuals to consider after they watch the movie?
IS: “What We Depart Behind” explores legacy, loss, and bonds throughout nice distances. In mild of the pandemic, I consider these themes are extra resonant than ever. My hope is that individuals who have skilled the lack of a cherished one will be capable of hook up with the movie and discover some therapeutic. I additionally hope the movie may assist us treasure our elders extra and recognize their knowledge, even when it’s arduous to parse at first.
W&H: What was the largest problem in making the movie?
IS: Though I’m fluent in Spanish, one in every of my greatest challenges was studying to grasp my grandfather’s Durango dialect. It took time for us to grasp one another. After years of filming collectively, we began to develop a typical language made up of understanding glances, native sayings I’d realized and are available to like, and wry gestures. Past difficulties of tackling post-production in the course of the pandemic, these linguistic concerns additionally affected how we edited: our editor Isidore Bethel speaks Spanish, however we made picks of footage collectively to make sure I may assist translate trickier turns of phrase — typically with the assistance of my mother!
W&H: How did you get your movie funded? Share some insights into how you bought the movie made.
IS: The entire movie’s funding has come from grants. I’m extremely grateful to all the establishments which have supported me on this journey. The Sundance Institute got here onboard in 2018 by way of their Documentary Improvement Fellowship, which was an incredible early vote of confidence within the undertaking and in me as an artist. From there, we had been in a position to increase extra funds due to the great generosity of Simply Movies | Ford Basis, Subject of Imaginative and prescient, El Paso Museum and Cultural Affairs Division, Austin Movie Society, and UT Austin’s Division of Radio-Tv-Movie.
We additionally obtained inventive and strategic assist from Catapult Movie Fund and the True/False Catapult Tough Minimize Retreat, the Gotham Documentary Lab, the Jacob Burns Movie Middle Inventive Tradition Residency, the Logan Nonfiction Fellowship, and Ji.hlava’s New Visions Discussion board. With out these funders and organizations, in addition to my producer Emma D. Miller, I’d not have been in a position to make this movie.
That is my first function documentary. As a first-generation Mexican American whose dad and mom have all the time labored service trade jobs, I don’t match the standard profile of a documentary filmmaker, nor have I had sources to self-fund my initiatives. With out entry to grant funding, this movie merely wouldn’t exist within the kind it does immediately.
W&H: What impressed you to grow to be a filmmaker?
IS: I didn’t encounter filmmaking till I used to be in school. As a first- and second-year scholar, I wrote a variety of essays about what it meant to develop up on the border as a Latina. However I assumed, “Who’s going to learn these?” A tremendous professor, Dr. Daniel Castro, opened up my eyes to Latin American and overseas cinema. He confirmed us movies I’d by no means heard of earlier than, like “Central Station” and “Pixote.”
After a semester overseas in Buenos Aires, I began to toy round with the thought of pursuing filmmaking as a strategy to discover related questions on place and identification, however with the potential for a distinct sort of attain. And it was Dr. Castro who inspired me to use to UCLA for movie faculty.
W&H: What’s the perfect and worst recommendation you’ve obtained?
IS: Worst recommendation: In case you have a job provide, take it — you may’t afford to overlook a possibility.
Greatest recommendation: Tackle and pour your inventive efforts into initiatives that encourage and transfer you.
W&H: What recommendation do you could have for different girls administrators?
IS: Don’t await others to provide the inexperienced mild. Greenlight your self, even with out funding or institutional validation. Do it for your self, before everything. I labored on “What We Depart Behind” for a number of years with none type of trade assist — throughout that point, I relied on supportive mates for encouragement, I borrowed cameras and sound gear, and I requested for favors to get the undertaking off the bottom.
W&H: Identify your favourite woman-directed movie and why.
IS: Agnés Varda’s “Vagabond.” The cinematography completely depicts the enigmatic nature of the protagonist, Mona. Usually, I’m drawn to complicated and nuanced feminine characters, and Varda’s are true-to-life and multi-layered. Mona is a fiercely unbiased drifter; I’ve seen loads of males play that position all through movie historical past, however hardly ever have I seen a feminine protagonist adeptly navigate these sorts of powerful experiences. “Vagabond” is from 1985, but it surely spoke to me many years later, and Varda’s hybrid documentary kind has since impressed my very own filmmaking.
W&H: How are you adjusting to life in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you holding inventive, and in that case, how?
IS: I began instructing at UT Austin in the course of the pandemic, and that has confirmed to be a saving grace for my creativity. I’d been feeling burnt out and remoted in the course of the first months of the pandemic. I used to be actually lacking the journey and sense of neighborhood that had nourished and impressed me previously. However I’ve discovered that being within the classroom energizes me, too, and my college students push me to assume exterior the field every day. I see connections between their enthusiasm and my very own inventive work.
I’ve additionally been engaged on an omnibus narrative function undertaking with 4 different Latina filmmakers in Texas: Chelsea Hernandez, Sharon Arteaga, Lizette Barrera, and Jazmin Diaz. Collaborating with these unbelievable artists has equally been a supply of inspiration and creativity in the course of the pandemic. Through the top of COVID, we might meet weekly by way of Zoom to debate our concepts for the undertaking; this vitality gave me a lot hope throughout these troublesome occasions.
W&H: The movie trade has a protracted historical past of underrepresenting individuals of shade onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — destructive stereotypes. What actions do you assume must be taken to make it extra inclusive?
IS: Business gatekeepers ought to extra adequately symbolize the members of our filmmaking neighborhood. I additionally consider in financially supporting BIPOC artists particularly. Many people in any other case would haven’t any likelihood to make movies, not less than not on a scale the place they’re in a position to attain broad audiences. And once we wield energy — monetary, inventive, or skilled — we have to be sure that we’re participating it according to our personal moral and inventive priorities.
After I obtained funding for the undertaking and was in a position to convey on collaborators, I used to be deliberate about whom I labored with: girls, BIPOC, and LGBTQ artists from traditionally underrepresented communities. These filmmakers all had an unbelievable inventive affect on the undertaking: cinematographers Judy Phu and Monica Smart — and Mina Kim Fitzpatrick and Laura Bustillos Jáquez, who helped on a couple of shoots; sound recordist Glenda Charles; sound designer Lena Esquenazi; title and graphic designer Yen Tan; and numerous others. I first linked with many of those collaborators due to Brown Women Doc Mafia.
It’s additionally essential for me, as a Latina artist, to problem myself artistically, ethically, and narratively. It’s straightforward to fall again on stereotypes, and I consider that placing within the work to keep away from them finally makes my filmmaking stronger.
Supply: Women And Hollywood
