Thriller Night
Amat Escanate in focus, Spanish storytelling for kids and a preview of La Linea 2024
Our focus this month is on Mexican director Amat Escalante, best known for his controversial film Heli, which won him the Best Director Award at Cannes in 2013. Escalante recently directed a number of episodes for the Netflix series Narcos, Mexico and also headed up the Official Competition Jury at this year’s BFI London Film Festival. His new film, Lost in the Night (Perdidos en la noche, 2023) hits UK cinemas this Friday.
We also highlight some upcoming Latin American events including storytelling in Spanish for kids, a sneak peak at La Linea’s 2024’s opening weekend line-up and welcome journalist Peter Yeung to Substack, whose new newsletter will be documenting his travels across Latin America in the coming months.
“When I’m writing, I want to challenge the viewer, get them to a point where you want almost anything to happen because the tension has been so high.”
Amat Escalante, Senses of Cinema
Amat Escalante is one of Mexico’s most exciting contemporary directors. He started out as an assistant to Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas, but quickly made a name for himself as a daring and original filmmaker.
Lost in the Night, his fifth features, comes after a break of seven years. Unlike the unflinchingly brutal Heli or the weirdness of his sci fi film The Untamed, Lost in the Night is “a fairly conventional crime movie. It’s one that may well extend the director’s global audience.” It is also the first time Escalante has cast professional actors.
The film follows a young labourer, Emiliano (Juan Daniel García Treviño) as he searches for his activist mother, who has disappeared under mysterious circumstances after taking part in a protest against a local mine. His quest leads him to the wealthy Aldama family. There he meets Rjgoberto, a famous artist, his actress-singer wife Carmen and beautiful daughter Mónica, and soon realises that their celebrity veneer hides a darkness, not least in their morbid fascinations.
Amat Escalante talked to the Argentine Film Festival about some of his ideas for Lost in the Night.
AFF: Lost in the Night is the first feature you made after directing several episodes of Narocs Mexico. Did you already have the project in mind before accepting Narcos and did the experience of working on the TV show influence you at all when you came to make Lost in the Night?
Amat Escalante: Yes, I think there was some influence especially in the exposure I had to actors and some other crew members. The closeness I had with professional actors and some celebrities inspired my interest in exploring the phenomenon of being famous and how that plays out in my country with its own set of problems with social inequality. I had another project that I wanted to do during my time in Narcos, that had to do more with the military and the real life disappearance of 43 student activist in the state of Guerrero in 2014, but I think that I became kind of saturated with police and military elements during my work in that series and so I decided to change the story quite a bit to what ended up being Lost in the Night.
AFF: The character of Rigoberto (Fernando Bonilla) could be said to be lacking in a moral compass: an artist who exploits the pain of others. Can you talk a bit about your decision to include this character in the story, especially in relation to you your own role as a filmmaker exploring difficult subjects?
Amat Escalante: I think that it is something very present if you are creating stories that are being inspired by the place and tragedy that many people are living in very close to me. This is inevitable for me, especially in a country like Mexico, but what I wanted to question is the approach when it comes from a dishonest place and the motivations are corrupt. How close one always is of being part of the problem instead of somehow helping things be better. I think Rigoberto is not coming from a good place and that his intentions are dirty, so his art is corrupt, or at least more corrupt than it should be. Me as a filmmaker that tells stories of people in difficult social circumstances, it has been a question that I have made to myself for sure, but there is an ethical honest approach that I trust will come from who I am and how I live.
AFF: Lost in the Night is soundtracked by Stranger Things composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein– what drew you to working with the duo? Also, what was behind your choice of a soundtrack that had echoes of the Western and what was the effect you hoped the music would achieve in the film?
Amat Escalante: I was very excited to work with Kyle and Michael because they have a very cinematic approach to their sound. I love the Stranger Things theme music and when my director friend Joaquin del Paso introduced me to them I felt very comfortable in our discussions and it ended up being a very nice creative experience. We worked from afar as they also usually work between them in that way. The examples I showed them were from older films, from the ‘70’s, some Italian exploitation stuff and at the same time I wanted it to have a pop sensibility, since the Aldama family is in that world. Now we will be producing a couple of Vinyl editions of the Soundtrack for the release of the film.
Lost in the Night will be in UK cinemas from 24th November.
Pes al revés with Mar de canciones
Mariano Pose, teacher and Argentine musician, brings his sea of games, songs and crazy tales in Spanish to this fun family workshop .Mariano sails around the world with his music to spread the message of Pez al revés: go for what we love doing, even if we have to swim against the current.
Sun 3 December at Rich Mix
La Lines 2024
Los Tigres del Norte, Ana Tijoux, Lila Downs and Argentina’s very own La Yegros are some of the big names playing London’s La Linea Latin Music Festival at their opening weekend in April 2024.
Peter Yeung – Field Notes
Journalist Peter Yeung has just started his Latin American Odyssey, taking him on a slow-moving journey overland from Peru to Mexico. His first newsletter uncovers some surprising stories from Peru with pieces for The Guardian, Al Jazeera and The Telegraph.
That’s all for now,
Saludos!
The Argentine Film Festival team
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