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In the Midst of Culture and Grief: Interview with Robie and Alejandro Flores, Directors of NEPANTLA: EL ENTREMEDIO

Ariadna Coronel

As part of the documentary screenings at the 22nd Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), Nepantla: El entremedio (dir. Robie Flores, 2024) was presented.

Navigating between two opposing cultures that simultaneously enrich each other, while living in a border town and mourning the loss of their brother Marcelo, Robie and Alejandro Flores embark on a journey into memories that lead them to reconsider the value of life and what defines us as individuals.

Attending as part of the Official Selection of the 22nd FICM, we shared a heartwarming conversation about the documentary with Alejandro and Robie Flores.

 

FICM: El entremedio addresses Marcelo's search for memories but it also takes off regarding Tex-Mex identity. So, did you aim to address this last point from the beginning, or how did the development of the entire documentary lead you to this?

Robie Flores: Yes, it was a journey because it started in 2017. The 2016 elections had already passed, Trump said that the border was a very dangerous place and all of that. I was working in a news station in New York, listening to all the news on a loop, and they were saying all these things about the border. It started like this: I was hearing all this and thought, "This is not how it is." For us, it was kind of boring, we wanted to get out. The way it was portrayed in the news seemed like an action movie or something. We said, "No, I want to make a film that shows the border as we recognize it." Initially, the idea was to make a film as a diary of what everyday life looks like at the border, and I didn't want to insert myself into the film. I came from journalism school, where they teach you to film without interfering; you have to be objective. It’s a separate school from documentary filmmaking; direct cinema, and very purist. So I arrived wanting only to record and not incorporate my experience, but, over time —it took years— it became very difficult to deny my experience and how it colored everything we were searching for and seeing. Instead of forcing a theme of a border where we see the same things from both sides, like a mirror —that's how I was filming at first— I said, "The truth is I’m neither Mexican nor American, I’m the mix of both, and honestly, yes, I am more American than Mexican, and that’s okay. That’s my experience and that’s what I know, that’s what I can film." So I allowed that self-consciousness I had my whole life, that I had to prove I was sufficiently Mexican or American,  to wash off. After I let that go, the topic of identity could arise, and we could really focus on those specific themes that border residents experience, especially on the American side, where we are always trying to fit in —and we don't really know where. But the mix of those two is what creates the culture and the experience.

Alejandro Flores: Yes, we hired a writer as a consultant, Bárbara Cigarroa, who is from Laredo. Two hours from our border. She’s a writer, and screenwriter, and she was helping us during the pandemic. The pandemic hit, and we couldn’t finish shooting the whole idea we had of "okay, let’s film children and childhood at the border at different stages." So, Bárbara asked, "How do we deal with these gaps? We couldn’t film certain things; how do we continue a story?" With what we had and what we had already edited. She would ask us: “But, why? Why does this story matter to me? Why does it matter to the audience, why is this border story important?" And when she and RobIe started to talk, it was like, "We're not going to work; we're just going to get to know each other and talk about what motivates you, what your ideas are, what your vision is." That’s when the topic of Marcelo came up, which was always implicit in the reasons for being at the border, for being home and portraying these stages of childhood: they reflected us. And she said: "Now I understand why you’re here.”

Robie Flores: And now I understand why you’re showing us all these scenes that at first I thought "Well, this is cool because you see a quinceañera, you never see one so Texan; or that the girls go clubbing on a weekend but cross the bridge. Nobody sees this." And she said, "Yes, but why does it matter to me? Why do these kids playing by the river matter to me?" And she, being a border resident too, brought out that perspective and said, "Yes, now I understand why you’re seeing all this and why these scenes matter to you: it’s about Marcelo and this unique experience you had together." Identity and our family and how we were raised is something we share and we could never talk about, so this film was also a way to have that conversation, that meditation with Marcelo.

FICM: And the title evokes mourning for Marcelo’s passing, but it also evokes this border territory where you lived and which is right in the middle of two cultures. How did you arrive at the title? Was it first the title and then the ideas to formulate it?

Robie Flores: Yes, the title came first, it was around 2016 when I was writing, I don't know if I was going with my mom, whom I visited, and we were crossing the bridge. Being suspended in the air —I mean, on the bridge— but above everything, waiting, you feel like you’re in this in-between space, doing nothing, forced to just sit and wait. We always had to wait hours on the bridge as kids, but being older and going back to visit, you see everything with different eyes. It was after Marcelo passed away that I was always thinking about those feelings of being in this in-between space, where we are neither here nor there, in a mental, emotional, cultural, and physical in-between space. I was very interested in that space and that space in time too, because it always mattered to us. Marcelo was always very present and he cared about all the moments in between: going to the party or the festival, or whatever it was. You get ready and feel excited when you arrive; it was always the journey to the moment, but all the moments in between were what caught his attention. All those accumulated moments are what shape us, because yes, we have the quinceañera, or the graduation, or the big dance festival, or whatever, but everything we did in that in-between space is what we have. I loved the idea of searching for those super everyday moments that we don’t keep. So yes, it was the title I had in mind for almost a year, and from there everything else started to take shape.

FICM: As you said, there are many parts of the documentary that show the everyday life of people in Eagle Pass, but there are also many others that seem like a dream, and others are a collage of memories formed by recordings of Marcelo. How did you decide what would be part of the final documentary and what wouldn’t to guide us to find the Tex-Mex identity and also what Marcelo meant to you?

Robie Flores: That was super difficult, deciding which moments. We recorded from 2017 to 2022. At first, the first year felt much more formal, as I said, I loved Frederick Wiseman's film *In Jackson Heights* (I’m butchering the title), where he’s just exploring the systems of Jackson Heights in New York. So I was inspired by that, going with the mayor on the American side, to English classes on the Mexican side, to the maquiladoras, to the businessmen; I mean, how the border functions logistically with all the people running the border. All that was super interesting, but not as interesting to watch as a feature film. I was boring myself, so I said, "if I'm bored, then everyone else will be too." And when I started focusing more on my experiences reflected with the kids in the present moment, that’s when we began to collect all these moments, all these experiences. Little by little (I think it was when we couldn’t continue filming during the pandemic) we entered Marcelo’s visual diary, which he had already done, which we had seen and had formed a video with his collection of moments. I remember that a professor, Christian Johnson, from my master’s program, had seen that video we made as a tribute to Marcelo two years before and said, "This is super interesting, you should make a film or present a film." She had told me that before, and that idea stuck with me, "Wow, these images that Marcelo captured inspire me to film everything I’m filming right now and how I’m filming it." So that’s when the idea of incorporating him into this project began because it felt like we could never really return to those moments, to those memories I wanted to recover when we were filming. It felt dreamlike, so we wanted to stay in that space, where it felt like the present but was also the past. We really wanted to sit with those feelings, not play with time because those are the questions I was asking a lot during the process, personally with mourning. So I wanted to reflect on the emotional and mental state of living it while doing it.

FICM: What did all that knowledge mean for you in making a documentary where you explore that barrier between documentary and fiction? How did you explore it and in what ways does it materialize in what you wanted to say about Tex-Mex identity and Marcelo?

Robie Flores: At first, I was inspired by my influences from American direct cinema, like D. A. Pennebaker, Richard Leacock, and Frederick Wiseman, where the observation and fly-on-the-wall approach come in. Arriving at a place and exploring it without much influence. Also, with all the rules of journalism in the U.S.: be objective and you can’t insert yourself into the story; you can’t influence what you’re seeing. At first, I was very strict and didn’t allow myself to explore more; I was putting up my own barrier and documenting everything as if it were a more formal documentary, like news. But that’s exactly the opposite of what I really wanted to do from the beginning, and I realized it was something I had deeply ingrained.

Alejandro Flores: I got scolded a lot. Because I didn’t come from the film world, and my shadow would appear in the shot, and they’d say, “We can’t use this take anymore, Alejandro,” or “I can hear you on the mic, why are you talking to the girl’s dad?”

Robie Flores: Yeah, Alex would chat with everyone. He always ruined the takes. He’d be laughing. At first, I was a big purist, but then I started watching movies. I watched a lot of Chantal Akerman’s films, she made many documentaries that were observations where she spoke and reflected. I also watched films by Agnes Varda, where there was more room to ask questions and comment. We wanted to make a film with real people, but that felt like a movie where you wouldn’t question whether it was fiction or not. It was about creating an experience, and I wanted to present—the way I saw and recorded—the border as elevated, showing the landscapes as I felt and lived them as a child. Like a huge world full of possibilities where I could expand. We wanted to get rid of all those rules, and the new rule was: “What do we want to see and how do we achieve it? Who do we look for? How do we capture it?” We wanted to see a quinceañera party with Selena—and we found it—, we wanted to see a family barbecue... So that became our ultimate rule: How do we create what we want to see on screen?

FICM: What did you learn as siblings, both from Marcelo and from each other?

Alejandro Flores: I learned to shoot, I learned to use a camera. Although I loved cinema since high school, Marcelo and I took an audiovisual class and made shorts and commercials but I went into business; I studied supply chain management, and when I came to work with Robie, I had no formal training in documentaries. So Robie taught me to shoot, to hold my shot “Hold the take for 20 seconds even if you think it’s over, there’s no more action.” To be patient. Something personal that was really beautiful is that, well, Robie is my older sister, and at first, it was very hard to work together and not have this hierarchy of “I’m your sister, so you do what I say.”

Robie Flores: I’m the oldest, I know more. And I do know more, but not because I’m older.

Alejandro Flores: What was really cool about working with her, and I give her a lot of credit, is being able to learn from her and say, “Yes, I’m your older sister, but you, just as much as I do, have something to teach me.” It’s a horizontal collaboration, and it’s not that I direct you and tell you how to do things. We’re a team; your experience also matters, you know what it was like, how it feels, you have your memories in this place, and in the end, it’s a story of border identity and family. So, having that trust to say what you feel or if something doesn’t sit right with you.

Robie Flores: It was super nice to have this experience where for the first time in life, it wasn’t “I’m your older sister, you’re my little brother.” I did give direction, only because I had spent more time in school for this, but I told him, “At some point, you’re going to surpass me and know more than I do,” and that happened; we reached that point, and Alex always knows more than I do—you read things and they stick with you, and they don’t for me—so he’s always teaching me everything he learns. Now we’re super equals, and we maintain it that way, and that was our first rule. The beauty of it is that at the end of the day, we’re still family, and when we had a tough day, we’d come home and talk, we’d make each other laugh; he protects me, and I protect him. In this process, which is very difficult and very emotional when talking about Marcelo, remembering him, it’s weird that for a long time, throughout all these years we worked, it was like a diary for us and something we did together, alone in our little bubble, and now we’re here talking about it, and it’s super strange and nice that we have each other to discuss and understand that experience; since we know each other so well, we don’t need to say much to understand each other and know what we’re thinking. And with Marcelo, we learned a ton. There are so many things we discovered from reading his journals, from watching the videos, everything he recorded, and we’d say, “Wow, all the things that mattered to him and all the nonsense he was thinking that stressed him out.” He was very present. He taught me to be in the moment, to appreciate nature, to appreciate all the moments with each other, with our family, with the new people we meet, and an immense curiosity that I wish I could be like him: the room would fade away when someone was with him.

Alejandro Flores: For me, I feel like when someone is no longer there, you appreciate them more, and you start to miss all those little things you saw as superficial, odd, or curious. I feel like he was always philosophizing—or wanted to be deep but wasn’t really. I remember once when I was driving, he said, “Hey, don’t you sometimes think, when you see the moon, that the sun is behind it?” and I was like, “No,” and I thought, “What a silly question,” and now I reflect on it and think, “How present he was.” He saw his surroundings and questioned the why of things, and I feel like through this film, through seeing his hard drive of moments that caught his attention, I realized the things that had crossed his life that made him see life the way he did but not me. We’re twins, but each one is a world, and we live experiences that shape us in different ways. I would have liked to have these conversations when he was still here, but that’s how it goes. Those are life’s lessons, they come when they’re meant to.

Robie Flores: And it teaches you that now we want to have those kinds of conversations with you (Alejandro), with our mom, with our friends.

FICM: How did you feel knowing that you’re part of the Morelia Film Festival?

Robie Flores: When we found out that we were selected for Morelia, it was crazy. You know, we went to the festival two years ago with our post-production team because they had some films there, and they told us, “You guys should come one of these weekends instead of working, a road trip to see what it’s like and get excited; this is what you’re aiming for, kids.” And we went, and it was amazing. It’s beautiful. To begin with, the selection of films, filmmakers, and people who are really excited about movies. It felt very warm, and it was super cool; we only had about two days to do it, and we said, “How great to come back.”

Alejandro Flores: And Morelia is big, but at the same time, it’s small, so it gives you the opportunity to be with everyone who wants to go to the cinema in the same space; you run into everyone, you go to a party, to dinner afterwards, and you feel this excited energy. People want to hang out and talk about films. So, the fact that they liked the film was “wow.” First of all, for us who grew up with this identity crisis of “I’m not Mexican enough or American enough,” to have the Morelia Festival to say they want this film in the Mexican documentary competition was like, “What!?”

Robie Flores: It was a surprise for the whole team because we had all gotten excited about this dream since 2022. When we got selected, we called everyone; they were super excited, and they immediately canceled plans for other festivals they were going to because they wanted to go to Morelia together. It’s going to be a huge celebration and closure for our entire team because we did post-production on our film like three times.

FICM: Who is your favorite Mexican filmmaker?

Alejandro Flores: My favorite Mexican filmmaker is very popular, it's Guillermo del Toro. Marcelo and I studied in Austin and volunteered at South by Southwest in 2011, our first year of college. Marcelo had the chance to meet Guillermo when he gave a speech at the Paramount, and he even took a picture with him like they were buddies. Marcelo always loved Pan’s Labyrinth—and I love it too—but I feel like he has been one of the Mexicans whose magic and creativity have stood out. I really admire him a lot.

Robie Flores: You stole my answer. I remember when Pan’s Labyrinth came out; we still had the old movie theater in Eagle Pass, which had three tiny, sticky screens. But when Pan’s Labyrinth was released, it was the craziest thing. We were on the American side, and art films didn’t reach that side, especially not in Spanish, even though we were at the border. It felt amazing to be able to go to the cinema for the first time and not just see blockbusters but also see art films in Spanish. I went like five times in a row and said, “My family has to come, my friend has to come.” I remember the third time I went with Sayuri, one of my friends, and her mom came too, and then something happened with the sound, and her mom stood up and said, “Rewind it,” like 15 minutes to watch it properly. In fact, when I returned to Eagle Pass to make the film, the sad part about coming back and leaving New York was that I no longer had those art cinemas I used to go to, where you could see everything from all over the world at any time. But in Austin, there's the Austin Film Society, about three and a half hours from Eagle Pass. So the Austin Film Society was screening it for its 10th anniversary, and I was like, “I have to go.” At that time, I didn’t have a car because I had just returned, so I borrowed my mom’s truck and drove almost four hours just to see the movie and then drove back late after the screening, crying because it was a film that touched us so much, all of us siblings, and we were fascinated by it. Seeing it after so long and after everything we had gone through, especially with Marcelo, hit me hard.  Every time I watch it, I discover something new. What fascinates me about his films is that there are no rules, and there’s fantasy, and everything is allowed. The dragonfly that appears in the film always brings me back to Marcelo, back to Pan’s Labyrinth, to the fairies, and whenever I see them—my mom and I always say they show up for us—we always think of Marcelo and that film and all his films because they excited us as if we were exploring fantasy and storytelling possibilities.

Alejandro Flores: I want to add something else, specifically, I really like Y Tu Mamá También for the co-creative collaboration that Alfonso and Carlos have, because I heard a panel with Carlos where he talked about their directing relationship and how they created the script through their childhood memories. They had a shorthand, they used keywords that the other sibling would recognize and remember what they were talking about, allowing them to create with very few references.

Robie Flores: That inspired me a lot, and I thought, “Yes, exactly, it’s what we’ve also done or what we seek to do through our memories.” When there’s a reference, the second part of the story that I forget, and it’s nice to see examples of other filmmakers who have that experience. You think, “Wow, this is something I always do with my brother, and we can use it for our work,” and it’s great. It’s like a superpower.