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Kyzza Terrazas presented Bayoneta at the 16th FICM

Azul Ramírez @azulartx

The filmmaker Kyzza Terrazas presented his most recent film Bayoneta, a competitor in the Mexican Feature Film Section of the 16th edition of the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), at a press conference. He was accompanied by screenwriter Rodrigo Márquez Tizano, actor Luis Gerardo Méndez, and the producers Rafael Ley, María José Córdova and Rodrigo S. González.

The film follows the life of Miguel "Bayoneta" Galíndez, a retired boxer from Tijuana. Fate has led him to live in an attic of a housing complex in Turku, Finland. During the day he works as a trainer in a boxing gym and at night he drinks alone. A need for redemption will lead him to give the ring a shot again. That way, he will be forced to face his past, everything that years ago took him away from boxing and his family.

Being a co-production between Mexico and Finland, the director said it was a trip in all senses: "We just presented it in Finland and one of the points that people feel and respond to highlight about the film has to do with contrast and the cultural dialogue that the film generates. We always wanted it to be an unusual film in which we had this conjunction of different realities, surrounding the world of boxing, of course."

For his part, screenwriter Rodrigo Márquez Tizano, spoke about the subtopics that are captured in the film: "It's a film about boxing, but also about migration, about alignment, about loneliness, and above all, a magnificent construction of a character that while we started working him on paper, Luis Gerardo finished writing him," he said.

Actor Luis Gerardo Méndez said he had taken five months of training to prepare for the film: "It was very crazy, I had never invested so much time in preparing a character, it was very beautiful and demanding".

"When Kyzza offered the script to me, I immediately jumped because I felt that it was something different to who I am; I am a very peaceful person, I think I had never thrown or received a punch, it started as a very physical training, (... ) it was very nice to get to know the boxers, my coaches, more closely and to begin to understand how their head works, to understand that universe was very important for me".

Regarding the issue of migration, Kyzza Terraza recalled his short film Matapájaros, presented during the 3rd edition of the FICM, about undocumented Mexican workers: "For me, the issue of migration, living in the shadows and getting away from your roots is a theme that has always interested me, it is not a new issue, but what is relevant to the times is this double discourse that exists in this country, where on the one hand we demand that Trump stop proposing a wall, but have a lowkey wall on the southern border," he concluded.