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Death, the Image, and the Urge to Tell Stories: Interview With Nicolás Gutiérrez, Director of REPORTAJE

Thanks to his approach to sensationalist crimes, Nicolás Gutiérrez finds a way to explore the relationship between death and the human need to tell stories. By engaging with photographers, reporters, and theater actors, Reportaje blurs the line between documentary and fiction, reflecting on the tangible process through which facts become news.

After the screening of the film at the 24th edition of the Morelia International Film Festival, we had the opportunity to have a conversation about the making of the film with the director himself, who talked about the use of the printing press as a narrative thread, the materiality of cinema, and his return to Morelia—a place he describes as a home for his artistic practice.

FICM: Reportaje is a fascinating film from the beginning. It unsettles you because, at times, you’re not sure what you’re seeing; it also reveals a nocturnal side of Mexico that’s usually left out of its portrayals. What drew you to the world of sensationalist stories and made you decide to document them?

Nicolás Gutiérrez: Well, Reportaje is a film that deliberately seeks to grasp certain conceptions we have about verisimilitude and cinematic conventions in order to shake them up. What I love is that, as the film unfolds, it no longer matters whether what you’re seeing is real or not, fiction or not. In the end, it doesn’t matter because, as long as it is on the screen, it is your temporary reality. I mean, at that moment, there’s no way out, you’re trapped in a movie theater, and that’s your world.

I’m deeply interested in connecting with reality through cinema and making films with the people, places, and processes that unfold in everyday life. That’s when I met a crime photographer and said I’d love to accompany him; I joined him one night, and it turned out to be an extraordinary experience.

I’m intrigued by the fascination we humans have with violence. It’s something that, ultimately, I believe stems from our relationship with death. We may not enjoy living, but witnessing it as spectacle, as entertainment, amazes us because it brings us near the ultimate danger: losing our lives.

The film explores the connection between storytelling and death. It shows these people, devoted to crime journalism and theatrical performance, interact with death. Each of them does it in a different way: taking photographs, writing, acting. At the end of the day, it all relates to our human need to tell stories.

So, I believe it all comes from our fear of dying; deep down we just want to leave something behind—a testament to our time in this world. From that point, I began talking about these ideas with others who shared the same interest, they gradually joined in, and the result was a collective, layered, and delightfully chaotic film that I truly enjoy.

FICM: In this ensemble of characters, there are many contrasts between them—both in their personalities and in the way each one approaches the world of crime journalism. How did you get in touch with all of them and make them feel comfortable enough to open up and have this conversation?

Nicolás Gutiérrez: Something that has helped me in my almost anthropological and cinematic practice is connecting with people, photographing them, and being genuinely interested in their lives. Another thing that has helped me a lot is building relationships through work: my work is filmmaking, yours is journalism, and others have their own. I’ve found that when we’re willing to do something together, that’s when a real sense of teamwork emerges. In that dynamic, one thing naturally leads to the next. You meet a photographer who tells you: “You should meet this person,” and so it goes on.

This film is essentially the script I wrote years before shooting it, but along the way I found ways to enrich it and discover which voices could contribute to it. For example, the theater group is responsible for performing the fictional segment—the violent act the journalists depict. I met them only weeks before we started shooting because I wanted someone whose life had been closely touched by death to embody the character who pulls the trigger. I found Ismael, who became, for me, one of the film’s protagonists. Ismael was sent at seventeen to a juvenile detention center for taking someone’s life. There, he found theater—a space that helped him confront and make peace with death.

What I found in common with all these people is that all human beings share a connection to death: inevitable, inescapable, something that awaits us all. Whether you’ve faced death, touched it, or caused it, you’ll have something to say. This may be the most universal subject, the one we all share. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, young or old, we all build our stories around it.

FICM: The process of crime reporting dictates the narrative structure of this film; moreover, it offers beautiful images—rich in visual and sonic rhythm within the printing press. What inspired you to use the editorial process as the backbone of the narrative?

Nicolás Gutiérrez: Processes have always fascinated me, in every sense of the word. For example, in my previous documentary Sisyphus, we captured the rehabilitation process inside a recovery center. Actually, we wanted to escape the idea of framing it as a process, but we couldn’t help it, since there’s something about processes that reveals they’re the outcome of historical social dynamics. The newspaper process is even choral, as it involves many people and an entire chain that has reshaped its methodology over time.

The fact that in this process we find gestures shaped by centuries of evolution fascinates me. Why does a journalist write? Why does a machine press down? Why does a person pull the trigger? I think those immense processes mirror who we are. They echo our bodies, our thoughts, and the way we live.

There are processes in everything; they act, consciously or unconsciously, as a way to condense time. Ultimately, the process helps you deal with time. That’s why people use the expression “This is my process.”

FICM: In the documentary, one of the characters says, “Stories remain the same; we can’t overcome them; they still need to be immortalized.” As a filmmaker, how does this resonate with your work, with your conception of cinema, with your motivation to make documentary and fiction?

Nicolás Gutiérrez: It’s a beautiful line, one of those you’re always searching for. Somehow, that dialogue was already in the script, though I never handed it to him to say it. It’s a line that emerges when everything is in harmony, you just find it.  The film itself is born from that amazement, from a deeply personal admiration for everyone involved. It’s deeply meaningful to listen to these experiences firsthand, in a close and personal manner. 

In terms of the filming process, I’ve found it profoundly rewarding to move beyond the labels of “documentary” and “fiction.” What we must understand is that we live within a reality, and that the mind, the hands, the body, and the will—all play with it. Whatever we do inevitably alters reality, and reality reshapes us in turn. If one loses sight of the fact that a film is grounded in reality and tries to isolate it in an imaginary world, it loses some of the charm and beauty of the ordinary. 

In this film. it’s something I paid close attention to, since it deals with the loss of a medium that gives physical form to what it wants to express. It is an ambitious process of turning reality into something tangible. Think about it, news is being printed in a newspaper, with ink, with paper, with giant machines. It is a political conviction about reality and against virtuality.

For cinema, virtuality, and images are precious things, but it is always essential to return; otherwise, we end up with what’s happening nowadays. That’s why newspapers are disappearing: we’re completely satisfied with the only image of things. However, for me, the film embodies this corporeal and material element of ink, blood, body, and paper. It's a call to return to our roots—to literally touch things, to listen to people, to look around us; not toward the image, because that doesn’t exist. At the end of our lives, our hearts will stop beating. We must remember that, no matter what you show on social media, you have a body, someone beside you who is willing to listen to you, and the air surrounds you.

It was crucial for me to express that. I mean, by choosing to shoot on 16 mm, we aimed to create a tangible film—one that could be seen, heard, and felt in its imperfection. That’s why there’s so much gesture, so many hands, so much paper. Those were some of the ideas and tools we tried to capture in the film.

FICM: Two years ago, you presented Reportaje at the 10th edition of Impulso Morelia project. In what way did that experience, along with other feedback spaces, shape the project to reach this final cut, and what does returning to this city to present the film mean to you?

Nicolás Gutiérrez: Impulso Morelia was very important for the film in terms of post-production, since thanks to one of the awards we received, we were able to establish an alliance and co-production with Estudios Churubusco, where we completed the sound mix. It was a truly rewarding experience.

Spaces like this help you put the film out into the world and receive feedback. The editing process was long—it took a year—and I enjoyed it very much. The initial edit was done quite fast, since the whole film was already conceived beforehand, so, it basically remained just as it was. The hardest part was discovering the rhythm and voice of the narration. From what people told us, we wove the threads of what we wished to see intertwined within the film. We carried out numerous interviews, and finding what, from our perspective, would make the viewer question and immerse themselves in the narrative we built was what took the longest.

I’m very happy to premiere the film at the Morelia International Film Festival. I’ve been able to show many of my other works here, and coming back is always a pleasure. It’s like coming home.