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The Personal is Political: An Interview Comala's Gian Cassini

Alonso Díaz de la Vega

Comala (2020), dirigido y escrito por Gian Cassini, forma parte de la sección de Documental Mexicano en el marco del 19° Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia (FICM). 

En esta, su segunda participación en el FICM, Gian Cassini regresa con un documental muy personal e íntimo. Comala es la historia de un hombre que se reencuentra con su familia para confrontar la historia de vida de su padre ausente, un sicario fallecido asesinado años atrás en la frontera mexicana. La película se sitúa en el contexto de la guerra del narcotráfico en México, situación que marcó a toda una generación, incluyendo al director. 

El FICM tuvo la oportunidad de charlar con el director del documental, Gian Cassini.

Alonso Díaz de la Vega: The film comes from something very intimate - it's your story really - but it seems to me that it touches on a type of story that's disseminated throughout the country. Did you think to address these collective themes of violence?

Gian Cassini: Of course, I think that was the reason why I felt it was necessary to make this movie. When we lived through this abrupt violence that came to the country due to the war against drug trafficking, it was something that, I believe, marked my generation. We had never experienced anything like this, where we could say that we could experience violence at every hour of the day; where my friends, acquaintances were executed, ended up in the middle of armed encounters, and where we'd fear for our own life. It was something that stuck with me.

I remember that among groups of friends, they talked about how the government was not dealing with the root issues, the decision to take the army to the streets was a treatment of the undergrowth of the problem, but not the problem itself. When I see my family again, when I listen to them, when I see everything that my father left in them, it helped me identify all those root problems. I thought it was necessary to put them on the table so that it could be seen and thought about through a cinematographic piece.

Cinematically speaking, I had all access to my family. It was not easy, there was a lot of resistance at the beginning. But it is also thought of as something very universal, this is where the intimate as something universal comes from; the intimate as something political. People who see the film will be able to identify how in all these generations, in all these dynamics, although crime is not thought of at the moment this interaction is made, they are dynamics that lead to that over time.

ADV: The issue of violence spans several generations; your grandfather, for example, is also involved in all this. Do you think making the film is a generational issue?

GC: Of course. The starting point of the main character is that he is looking for this root, what is the root of this criminality, if we find it, maybe we can cut it. Something that the main character, me, learns or has learned is that I will never find a root. When we find what we thought was that root we realize that there is still a really long way to go to find it. However, you realize how all these dynamics repeat themselves over generations, not on purpose, but simply as part of human nature. You deal with things the way you can, the way you know. You can deal with certain knowledge or choose not to deal with it because you think, "I don't have the capacity." I think that from there you can stop, be aware, and decide to go somewhere else.

ADV: Something that you mentioned before was the intimacy of your family, representing that must have been complicated for you as a filmmaker because it could fall into exploitation or a show. How did you handle this?

GC: That was one of the most complex things I had to do, in reality with my family there was not that much complication because for me it was very clear that all of them are charming, honestly, and that allows you to connect more easily. Within the normalization that exists in them towards criminality, that makes them speak it as if we were talking about the movie that we saw yesterday, however, they have very charismatic personalities, so I was already aware of that. I just had to arrive with my camera and voila, they had to be themselves and nothing else.

Talking about myself, trying to be objective was the tricky part. It was very complicated for me, while I never had opposition to being honest, to being an open book in favor of the film, it was very difficult to try to be objective in something as ambiguous as what you yourself are; your memories, your feelings. . Doing all this exploration, writing all these texts, and also trying to avoid this whole issue of compassion, being seen as a victim, was very complicated. It is still difficult for me to say that I am the main character of Comala.

ADV: Was making the movie a way to heal those traumas?

GC: No, it definitely wasn't, the movie allowed me to move forward in many things; taking a position in respect to others, being empathetic towards others, being supportive, but if I thought that my catharsis is done, that I am going to undertake something completely new in my life and won't talk about my family, the reality is that no. What the film does is that it puts all these issues on the table, which, like the viewer who is going to see it for the first time, now our concern is taking on them, talking about them. The characters in the film stick with us because we feel empathy, compassion. You definitely take the characters home and you keep thinking about them, you keep talking about the circumstances and that is what we wanted to do with this film and it does the same with me. My main concern now is to continue having these dialogues off-screen, off-camera, because there are many things that still need to be discussed and there are many still to be processed, the film has given me tools regarding other things and, most importantly, it is the theme of solidarity, empathy, and feeling that you are part of a family.