The Mexican film Before the Vultures Arrive arrives at the European festival

Pasted in his room, always in sight, there is a postcard that years ago the Mexican director Jonas N. Diaz received as a gift. In it, an old man out in the open looks up, while a flock of birds crosses the sky above his head. It is a reproduction of the lord of the birds, an image captured by Graciela Iturbide in the mid-1980s, after the award-winning photographer saw that same scene in a premonitory dream. And curiously, although Jonás was unaware of this anecdote, from the beginning it was impossible for him not to attribute a certain symbolism to the portrait. He eventually took it as inspiration for a film where, as in Iturbide’s work, reality and reverie are intermingled: his debut feature, Before the vultures arrive.

ominous bird

Before the vultures arrivewhich premiered this week as part of the selection of the Rotterdam International Film Festival 2023, began to take shape “three, four years ago,” says Jonás N. Díaz in an interview. Having behind him a history of recognized short films inside and outside of Mexico, the director finally gave in to the insistent proposal of his friend and cinematographer Rigel García to shoot his first feature film. The self-imposed condition was that the project be simple, with few characters and locations, and based on that guideline, Jonás began to consider some ideas.

“But from there I started to fly,” the new filmmaker confesses to us. “It started to get more and more complex. And already being there, that is, once he started the train, there was no way to stop it. We were already with the emotion of: ‘We are going to make a film at any cost’”.

Eager to enter the realm of magical realism, the screenwriter also conceived a fiction influenced by the author Juan Rulfo and his anthology of short stories. The Burning Plain. One of the filmmaker’s greatest interests was to recover that characteristic mysticism of the Latin American Boom.

Such a yearning went hand in hand with his fascination with the aforementioned photograph of Graciela Iturbide. She let her imagination run wild and soon the birds represented there became fateful vultures: an invisible presence in her film, but palpable through the score and the sound design, Jonás assures us.

«In Mexico we have a lot of this theme of bad omens, bad omens, that something follows you. So, I think that the essence and the base of this film is that, to feel that there is something constantly lurking».

lost and unseen

Surrounded by this halo of magical realism, Before the vultures arrive tells the story of Tuza (María del Carmen Félix), a strong woman who for some reason is able to navigate inside the houses of wealthy people on a rowboat without being seen; Her purpose is to “fish” all the valuable objects that she finds there. However, when her assistant Justino (Francisco Pita) dies in a terrible accident, the protagonist agrees to assist the widow Luvina (Tsayamhall Esquivel) in the search for her body to give it a Christian burial before the vultures devour it.

“That is something that seems very Mexican to me,” says the director about the fear that the human remains will be desecrated. “We talked about how death is never the end. So, there is a concern to safeguard the body, even when the person is no longer there”.

Among the objectives of the film, there was also the erection of a metaphor on social contrasts. One of Jonás’ observations was that currently there are foreign and underprivileged people who arrive in Mexico City (CDMX) only to face the contempt of the city dwellers. “It looks like they’re invisible,” he notes. In her mystical work of collecting treasures, the protagonist easily breaks into bourgeois homes precisely because no one sees her.

Likewise, the way Tuza, Justino and Luvina spoke was another important aspect for the director. He perceives that the language is the most Rulfian in his film; Words that over time have fallen into disuse but whose meaning is still possible.

“This is my family, you know? My family comes from a town in Toluca and they speak and you hear those words that are already lost, but that are still part of your roots.”

An ode to the Golden Age

At some point in his more than ten years of experience, Jonás worked for TV Azteca in the relaunch of the historic Barbachano Archive; that is to say, those informative shorts that began to be shown before the films in the 40s. So through these materials, the director had a very particular approach to that period of the national film industry and does not rule out that they have been source of inspiration for his first feature film, which he describes as “an ode to the Golden Age of Mexican cinema.”

Jonas paid special attention to Cockroach (1959), because he wanted Tuza to have a character similar to that of the character played by María Félix in that film by Ismael Rodríguez. Eventually, one thing led to another, and at the suggestion of one of the producers, it was decided to knock on the door of the television actress. Maria del Carmen Felix, great-niece of ‘La Doña’. The Sonoran woman was delighted with the script and had the opportunity to capture a lot of her in her leading role.

«[María del Carmen] She is very enthroned with the character and she digs in and investigates you. It is something beautiful to see an artist of her stature and talent being born. She left us all speechless ».

Tape He (1953) by Luis Buñuel was another of the influences of Before the vultures arrive, especially because of the environment and the magic that surrounds his character, according to the filmmaker. On the other hand, the works of Gabriel Figueroa and Silvestre Revueltas were mandatory references for the photography and music departments, respectively.

“The most important thing about considering this as an ode to the Golden Age is that we made a film that is like a very Mexican timeless fable, full of magical realism and mystery.”

The city in the lake, the lake in the city

The story of Before the vultures arrive It essentially happens in a house, a cabin, and a lake, but none of it was filmed on location. The bet was to build sets that emulate such spaces; an ambitious and artisan work that Jonás gladly associated with the cinema of the Golden Age. However, in the absence of a forum, it was decided to recreate those three scenarios in the same house in CDMX. Yes, including the environment of a lake.

«How curious that there was a lake in Mexico City. Then we built a city and now you are building a lake in Mexico City,” someone told the director at some point, he tells us.

Although the production went ahead, the place proved not to be ideal. The sound of the planes filtered through the tin roof of the house every five minutes, which meant that a single camera shot required up to 23 takes. It also did not help that the address was located near some of the most complicated roads in the city.

«We were there by Viaducto and Insurgentes. So imagine the amount of movement and noise, but there we are, emulating a completely empty lake; a cabin in the middle of nowhere.

However, while his frustration with the planes was similar to Luvina’s with the vultures, Jonás happily admits that the experience deeply bonded the entire production team.

“It was really nice to give us this opportunity to say, ‘Well, we go upstairs and we have a cabin; we go down the stairs and we have the house; We entered a room and we have the lake’ All the elements were there and the house was very spacious. Right there we set up the art cellar and the dressing rooms. So it was really a very close film because we were cloistered, doing the job ».

“Very Rotterdam”

Before the vultures arrive it got its pass to the 52nd edition of the Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR), after several months of rejections by other prestigious independent film gatherings, such as Tribeca and Berlinale. The constant refusals fueled in Jonás a distrust towards the result. «I should have lowered two lines to the fable, to the Rulfian and magical realism», he remembers thinking. But later he understood that it was the perfect dose to seduce the Netherlands.

«Something very nice that they told me at IMCINE was: ‘It is that your film is very Rotterdam. In other words, in Rotterdam they love first films, magical realism, the strange, different languages, the retro… Your film is Rotterdam’. And already watching other movies I said: ‘Well yes’. Interestingly, it seems that we were destined to end up there.

His debut feature is part of the section Big Screen Competition, the second most important of the festival, only after the Tiger Competition. The winning film will obtain a profitable distribution agreement in the host nation.

“Honestly, being in Rotterdam, I already feel like a winner. But if the movie wins, it goes to theaters [en Países Bajos]. So it is also very exciting to think that we have been placed in that category, which is intended for movies. [con posibilidades de estar] in theaters and in streaming”.

Before the vultures arriveby Jonás N. Díaz, had its world premiere on Monday, January 30, as part of the official selection of the IFFR 2023. On the other hand, it is intended that the film produced by El Artesano Films enters large festivals in our country ( FICUNAM, among them) in order to finalize its Mexican premiere in the middle or at the end of the current year.