10 · 13 · 07

Sangre de mi sangre, 5th FICM closing ceremony

Doris Morales/Translated by Vicente Castañar

[imagen]Sangre de mi sangre, won the Premio del Gran Jurado del Festival de Cine de Sundance, 2007 (Sundance’s Great jury Award). This film was the closing film at the festival.

This film was written and directed by Christopher Zalla (Kysumu, Kenya), in it star the following actors: Jesús Ochoa, Armando Hernández, Jorge Adrián Espíndola, Paola Méndez and Eugenio Derbéz. The story is about an illegal young man who goes to the US to look for his father in Brooklin, New York. He arrives to NY with no money, his things have been stolen. He is alone, hungry and penniless, but he looks for his dad. While looking he finds a girl and she helps him get money. Meanwhile the young thief who stole the things of the young illegal, will also try to deceive the young illegal’s father that he is the son himself in order to steal his fortune.

Jesús Ochoa, Armando Hernández and Jorge Espíndola, and Benjamín Odell, the producer, went to the press conference. Odell said: “doing this movie was a challenge because it is an independent movie, Chris (the director) wrote the script and he took his story to Hollywood, everyone there read it and they wanted to hire him as a writer but no one wanted to film his story unless Benicio del Toro played the young man’s father and they wanted to film the story in English. Chris new that he could only make this film his way, so we just couldn’t get the support from big movie producers.

We started to shoot the film with a little bit of money, we didn’t have enough to finish it but with the little bits we shot we were able to get more support. Then our film was accepted at Sundance, that was a miracle because over 2 thousand films were competing for just 16 places. So we finally got the money to finish the film. This movie was made with lots of love, the three of us became a family.”

[imagen]Armando Hernández said: "Chris and Ben came to Mexico to look for a cast, I wanted to be Pedro but Chris said I should be Juan. So after doing the auditions I played Juan.

The hardest challenge was making it to other countries, telling our story, I thought language wouldn’t be a problem, we became a family, Chris always talked with us, he had a set idea, he gave us an incredible script. I was amazed at the script, I couldn’t believe they wrote it themselves. We felt motivated because it is about a Mexican young man who goes to the US illegally, this is a common topic, but then the movie is about the things that happen to him on the other side.”

Jorge Espíndola mentioned: “that is funny because I wanted Juan’s part and then I got to be Pedro, we exchanged characters. The filming process was really harmonious, we worked with people from all over the world, from Ukraine, Dominican Republic, Italy, Japan, we were from 25 different countries. The cool thing about this movie is that we created the characters while we were up there.”

Jesús Ochoa said:
"Chris wanted someone who looked tough in the outside but who could express sincere tender feeling towards his only son. When I arrived at the casting he saw me talking to my daughter and family and he immediately new that he wanted me for that part. I really liked the character, and the story because it talks about our Mexican people who must got to the States, but it wasn’t a drama, it shows no problems, it is about how they live, survive, I liked the movie a lot.”

They were asked about the film’s origins, and Benjamín Odell answered: "Chris had a friend who worked at a kitchen in NY, and he noticed that the Mexican illegals kept their money under the mattress and not in banks. This friend of his had a fortune, over 30 years of hard work, and Chris was really surprised to find out th