10 · 19 · 26

“Making this film was an act of faith”: Emiliano Rocha presented THE WIG at the 24th FICM

Gustavo R. Gallardo

The film La peluca [The Wig], directed by Emiliano Rocha Minter and starring Luis Gerardo Méndez, was screened as part of the 24th edition of the Morelia International Film Festival, with most of the crew in attendance.

“Making this film was an act of faith. We approached the actors saying: ‘There will be a script eventually, there isn’t one yet, but we’ll write it for you.’ We had no idea what we were going to do, but one thing was for sure: we were going to make it. And we did. It meant jumping into the void all the time,” the filmmaker confessed during a post-screening conversation with the audience.

Over the course of 64 minutes, La peluca [The Wig] tells us the story of Silvestre, a filmmaker in crisis who seizes the opportunity to make his film about Benito Juárez. However, a visit to a millionaire’s eccentric mansion draws him into a bizarre ritual where reality merges with nightmare. 

“We had a clear conception of what the movie was about, but the journey of making films in Mexico is tortuous, it’s a process that exorcises all your demons, you spend ten years writing your 300-page script, then you meet the person with the money, and they tell you your project is bullshit.” That’s how Luis Gerardo Méndez described his experience in the making of the film, and added: “It’s an incredibly personal film for everyone involved.”

María Évoli remarked that La peluca [The Wig] reflects the essence of filmmaking and of persevering even when things don’t work out. “It allowed me to play with the characters and with everyone involved in making the film,” she revealed.

Although the conversation with the audience hinted that the film seemed like an improvised work, Luis Gerardo Méndez explained that there was creative freedom and that, as an actor, “it was incredibly refreshing to see what the director would come up with. It was an act of faith. There were no rules, only freedom.”