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The Women Who Clean Up the City: Interview with Luciana Kaplan, Director of TREATMENT OF INVISIBILITY

Ariadna Lucas Coronel

You get up from your seat after watching a movie and leave some popcorn on the floor. You probably haven't thought that someone is going to have to pick it up, it seems that the spaces clean themselves, as if the sweepers or the cleaning staff of the place didn't exist: most of the time we don't see them.

In her most recent documentary, Tratado de Invisibilidad (2024), Luciana Kaplan exposes these points while addressing the lives of different women who have something in common: they work cleaning the spaces of Mexico City. These women's labor rights are violated in their entirety while they are invisibilized and assigned a marginal place in society, despite the importance of their work.

After participating with works like La revolución de los alcatraces ( 2012), which won a special mention for Best Documentary made by a woman at the 10th edition of FICM, and Rush Hour (2017), which won the Ojo for Best Documentary Feature at the 15th edition of FICM, Luciana Kaplan returns to the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM) in its 22nd edition to present her work on the precarious labor of women workers in the cleaning sector.

Luciana told us about this mosaic of stories brought together by a common labor in a documentary work that aims to vindicate their work and their rights through an aesthetic that hopes to show the beauty in places where, presumably, it shouldn't exist.

FICM: When did you decide to address the violation of labor rights, violence and invisibility of the women who clean the city on a daily basis?

LK: From a conversation that left me very shocked, I began to do research on what was happening with the cleaning workers, especially those in public spaces, because they are government workers and should be well protected, well paid, with benefits, vacations and, above all, they should be paid on time the amount they are really entitled to. This project was born from that. I decided to base it more on the idea that spaces seem to clean themselves, as if these women were invisible. So, starting there, I used the title and all the different ways of approaching the topic.

FICM: Your documentary begins in a movie theater, can you explain how you decided to structure the story that way?

LK: The thing is that I find it interesting that you go into the theater, you're watching a movie and the last thing you think about is that, when you leave the theater, someone is going to come and clean it. So, it was this idea of the relationship between cleaning and cinema. It's a bit like the story within the story. I had already seen, whenever I came out of the cinema, how the cleaning ladies would watch the film at the end. It was an incredible image to me. I wanted the viewer to leave with this idea that someone was going to come and clean the theater, and that at least those who were there would not litter.

FICM: I understand that you chose to highlight the stories of Rosalba, Claudia and Aurora because of the impact of their stories and the way in which they carry themselves. What were the first approaches to them like and how did you manage the intimacy necessary to enter their homes or get them to tell you about their fears?

LK: I did a lot of interviews, more than 50 or 60, with different women in the subway, in the streets, at the airport. I was looking for the right people to talk about this issue, because there are so many, but not all of them are willing to talk on camera. So it was also a decision between those who were willing, but also those who had the most interesting stories.

What I find interesting is that the three of them have very different ages, like a whole age range. So, you could provide a broader spectrum because they are not all young and they are not all older. In other words, they are really in very different life circumstances, even though they have all this abuse in common. What happens a lot in the documentary is that you always end up feeling closer to some characters or others; you sort of get along with one or the other and you can't even explain why. It's suddenly even a magical thing, and those are the ones who feature in the end. Maybe it's not the best story or one of the best, but it's also who you have that chemistry with, and that's what happened with the three of them. And I also found them in a very different ways.

For example, Claudia could not appear in the film. I mean, she couldn't because she could be fired. I found her in the subway, because I was on the subway. I would ask for their phone numbers because I couldn't talk to them there. So, what I started to do was collect phone numbers and then I interviewed them remotely. I had the interviews only in audio and I was very shocked by Claudia's. I think it was the one that made the biggest impact on me because what she said was so raw and cruel; she was desperate, so I thought it was important to take up that story and, if it couldn't be told, it had to be told with actresses. So, the whole idea of casting based on this story felt very important to me.

By contrast, in Rosalba's case, she had already appeared in a program on Channel 11 and the production people knew her, so she was already comfortable. It was a fairly easy way to get in. As for Aurora, I met her by chance at the airport. She is an incredible character, a very unique person and she stood out from the rest. So, it was like making that decision: “Okay, who will be the lead singers among so many other voices?” and I chose the three of them.

FICM: Why did you decide to adopt the castings for Claudia's testimony instead of keeping just one actress?

LK: Right when I did the casting, I wasn't originally thinking of filming all the castings. I wanted to see what happened with one and I thought it was very interesting that different voices and different women could play the same character. So, it seemed to me a very rich, very interesting resource, and it gave another dimension to the voice that I wanted to use. Like many faces, many Claudias. Although they were actresses, they had things in common. It seemed like a very interesting linguistic approach to me. So, I started filming all the castings. There were several women, some older, some younger, but all of them were somehow connected to Claudia's story and had something to say. Their way of narrating it was very different, and I thought it was a very interesting resource. So I decided to open up that entire part of the story.

FICM: In terms of aesthetics, how did you take care of photography to represent the invisibility of the women cleaners and sweepers? What was the justification for making it a black-and-white documentary?

LK: Well, from the beginning, the first two things I decided when I started writing the project were: one, that it was going to be called Treaty of Invisibility, and the other, that it was going to be in black and white. I felt that this kind of aesthetic somehow stylizes the lives of these workers and gives them an idea of non-temporality. I was interested because the stories are very raw and everything they tell is quite terrible. This idea of stylizing it, that the framing doesn't just present something ugly or that there is garbage, but there is also a certain beauty. There's a certain beauty in their faces, in their lives, in what they do, in their being in the city. It seemed to me that they deserved, within their possible invisibility, that kind of aesthetic. I worked a lot with the photographer, with whom I had already worked, on what this film should look like. What kind of photography it should have? Always keeping in mind this idea of searching for beauty. To look for the beauty in places where it is not supposed to be. I think it is a poetic film about garbage and about the assumed uncleanliness, because there is something we are not really seeing there. I think all these women deserve to be seen in a way that is not crude, that is not ugly, but in a way that is more aesthetic.

FICM: And have they seen the documentary? What did the women you portrayed in the documentary think of it when it was finished?

LK: They are very excited, obviously. I think they are hopeful that things can change and that it can be a tool for change. Obviously, they say, “Well, there are so many more stories missing" or "There is a lot of mistreatment,” and it's true. But I think that from the beginning there was all this insistence of, “When is this coming out? Because things have to change." I would tell them that it is not a news story and that it would not be coming out soon. Unfortunately, we documentary filmmakers are too long drawn out and it takes us several years to make films but I think we are still in time for the film to be seen and to generate certain changes in public policies and in the way they are treated.

FICM: How do you feel your work contributes to the conversation around current Mexican cinema?

LK: I think documentaries are in a hybrid format, I think it is important to continue generating new languages, new narrative experiments, which also have a strong, important and urgent social theme, but at the same time, I feel it offers another way of narrating. In these days, when the platforms dictate a single way of telling stories, a single narrative, a single way of presenting documentaries, above all, I hope it helps to open our minds a little to the fact that there are other narratives, there are other ways of telling stories. This is one of them.

FICM: Now, going into questions about Mexican cinema, what do you consider to be your favorite Mexican filmmaker of all time and why?

LK: Well, I really like the work of Tatiana Huezo and Everardo González. Let's say, they are documentary filmmakers who are also colleagues, they are people I studied with and feel close to. Within documentaries, they would be my favorite filmmakers.

FICM: Where were you and how did you receive the news that you had been selected to participate in the festival?

LK: Well, I was at home and the truth is that I was very excited because the Morelia Film Festival has always been a very important space, where I have presented my films, where I always feel at home; it's like a big family, where when you bring a new film, the first thing you think about is that at Morelia Festival, you will share it with colleagues, with friends from many years ago, and it's a place where films will always be well received.