A teenager carries the remains of his missing father in a box. Wistfully he boards a bus, ready to return to his grandmother. Looking out the window, he finds a man, who looks familiar. It’s his dad. Maybe it is. Or maybe he’s just a stranger. He doesn’t he carry his bones in his lap? With this premise, the director Lawrence Beams presents his film Box, a work in which he seeks to dissect the impact of the father figure or, rather, his absence and the desire to fill it. The film is presented as the closing of a trilogy that addresses variations on the same theme and that includes the short film elephants never forget (2004) and the film From there (2015), a production with which Vigas won the Golden Lion at the Venice Festival that year, becoming the first Latin American to do so.
Of Venezuelan origin, but living in Mexico for 20 years, the director affirms that culminating in Mexico his film discourse on the Latin American father figure seemed to him the most logical option, not only because his productions have always had Mexican financing and talent and already It seemed to him time to situate the narrative here; but rather due to the fact that in the country, patriarchy takes hold in the paradoxical figure of the absent or disappeared father, either by his own will or by the violence of organized crime.
For the film, he had the collaboration of the actor Hernan Mendoza and the teenager Hatzín Navarrete, to whom he decided to offer the leading role despite not being a professional actor, after making casting with young people from Nezahualcoyotl. The interaction between the two is the nodal element of the story and the emotional pillar that, in addition, oscillates between disdain and good treatment, a good face and a severe gesture.
Box It reaches commercial theaters after its premiere in Mexico at the Morelia International Film Festival and after appearing at different festivals, where it added different medals to its list of awards: the Best Director award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival; Grand Jury Prize and Special Mention for the Screenplay at the Lisbon & Sintra Film Festival in Portugal, and the Sfera 1932 Award and Segnalazione Cinema For UNICEF, at the 2022 Biennale.
Lorenzo, I believe that the story of Box it hides and insinuates different things without losing anchorage and thematic clarity. How did you build the script? And how did you use the elements of the space in favor of the visual proposal?
The script started from a news item that I saw on television and that had an impact on me, about people who were going to retrieve the remains of their relatives from a common grave and I thought, what would happen if a child who goes to look for the remains of Your father suddenly sees him on the street, alive? That’s how it all started and I decided that this would be the beginning of the film, I wanted to explore how he would take it and also how the supposed father would take it when a little boy showed up and suddenly told him: “I’m your son”. Then I decided to set it in Chihuahua because it seems like a beautiful state to me, and I wanted the film’s landscapes to be overwhelmingly beautiful and aggressive at the same time, and that place gave me those conditions. Also the climates are very important for the story; the child arrives with warmth, which matches his emotion at having seen his father who he thought was dead, with his hope of being accepted. However, little by little he cools down the climate of the film (the real and the emotional), until it ends, for example, in a climactic sequence in the middle of a snow storm.
Another great challenge was getting to film inside a maquiladora. We spent almost a year waiting for them to let us film, because they are very careful with their production processes and they don’t let anyone in; but we did it and I think it’s the first fictional film to do it.
Hatzin, Lorenzo has said that filming was a pretty tough experience. Taking into account that it is your first leading role and that you have not previously worked as an actor, what were the aspects that were most challenging for you on an acting, emotional and professional level?
Hatzin: The most difficult thing was precisely working on the emotions that I had to convey, by myself and together with Hernán, to show this relationship of father and son, trying to make it feel as real as possible while addressing the secondary issues, such as disappearances or precarious work in the maquilas. It was hard, but it was possible to get to that point where I felt good working with them.
Hernán, you build a father figure that oscillates between disdain and good-naturedness, between a good face and abuse. How did you work these nuances to give your character this ambiguity?
Hernán Mendoza: What we were looking for was to represent a big guy, who would contrast with the smallness of Hatzín. For that characterization I gained weight as much as I could and they put several jackets on me. At the same time we wanted him to have a touch of good-naturedness, of a good person, to be nice but also to cause fear and be threatening; in general, that you knew that he is a dangerous guy. This combination makes it a very suitable image for a father figure, as all of us have seen our parents in some way.
Lorenzo, what do you think have been the biggest problems that have resulted from placing so much importance on the father figure? What is the comment about the Latin American patriarchy that we can find in the discourse of La caja?
In Mexico and all of Latin America, many children are raised without a father figure, it is a shared conflict. I wanted to explore the problems that life can bring, the dangers that desperate search brings, as well as what one is willing to do to win the love of this figure. Because I think that we all want in some way to fill in that figure if it was not available, to supplant it; either with a political figure or with a man you meet on the street who can act as your father.
I believe that we all have a box full of things, memories, feelings. Sometimes we can open it to get everything it has and other times we can’t. Hatzín’s character, in the last instance, perhaps manages to open it, but have you been able to?
Boxa film by Lorenzo Vigas, premiered in Mexican theaters on November 11.
Carlos Carrizales Communicologist. I learned to graduate in everything as an apprentice. Irredeemable cinephile, who can never see everything he wanted. Also an aspiring journalist. Lover of the series, of the trova, and of everything that implies to know new things.