Filmmaker Statement

We live in a celebrity fueled society where thanks to social media celebrity is no longer reserved to artists or athletes. This obsession with celebrity has heavily influenced the youth through the rise of platforms like Tik Tok and Instagram. This obsession endlessly fascinates me. It’s captivated the world and consumes our days. The idea for this short was born from this obsession with celebrity today and its evolution as it relates to our roots. I’ve often thought about what the repercussions of celebrity are and wondered what kids who are adopted by celebrities go through since they are often uprooted from one very different life to one in the spotlight of excess. Celebrities themselves are often especially fascinating when they are a rags to riches story themself so I’ve created the story of a J.Lo or Rihanna type - Yahaira, a Dominican American Reggaeton pop star who has recently adopted a young girl, Alma, who was detained by ICE and has no family. Yahaira sees herself in Alma, another Latina, but has she done more damage than good? This idyllic fairy tale story is one that as Latinos we are often fed from an early age especially if you were raised on telenovelas. It often results in an identity crisis, a “ni de aqui, ni de allí” dilemma. This short film is a character study of circumstance, an intimate portrait of a young girl in a new life with her caretaker who is also in many ways still finding her own voice as she navigates fame as a musician at the peak of her career. It is also a celebration of womanhood told in subtle strokes through the comments on our young protagonist’s body and her obsession with validation online and the obsession with Yahaira’s dating life and new role as a mother. The story at its core is about two immigrants an older one born in the States who has worked very hard and is second generation to build upon something and has “made it” and their adopted child who has been flung into the spotlight after loss and what that culture shock is like a world riddled with social media. Both of our main characters are trying to hold on to their roots. Yahaira is through celebrating her roots in her music, but she doesn’t speak Spanish fluently. She just presents that she does singing. But for Alma it is a much stranger relationship to assimilation and her past since she’s more recently been removed, but still can’t help but see herself and what might have been in the children of housekeepers. It is hard not to see ourselves in the other and in our alternate possible futures. This reality can be even more impressionable as a child. I want this story to be told in intimate close-ups that help us feel for our protagonist Alma and her POV. These close-ups will serve as gateways between our young protagonist’s inner life and online life on her iPhone screen where she is assimilating to the culture of celebrity online where she has an active, captivated audience being a pop star’s adopted daughter even though she is in fact still a child. These close-ups will be juxtaposed by sprawling wides of isolation. For example, when Alma is in her large bedroom, the dining room or in front of their house. This will help exemplify the loneliness of celebrity and also being removed from your culture or homeland. I hope to use both formats from our Alexa and her new cellphone’s recordings which gives the world a much more grittier feel through her handheld/imperfect lens. My style as a filmmaker is one that is heavily influenced by my background as a Production Designer. It is controlled and stylized and specific. Color and sound are characters to me and can really give the film a strong POV. This film will have a very specific color palette that combines how clean and presentational this whole new world is of Hollywood —-flashy and dreamlike —- with whites, creams and reflective surfaces like marble and glass that play with light. The awards show will be heightened through sound design and lighting - flashes on their face and saturated colors during the performance, but we never leave our protagonist or her phone on the red carpet or in the audience. Sound serves as a link to the past too when we see her remember whispers of sounds from the past things that echo reminders of the past whether it’s a truck on the highway or a sewing machine when she touches the fabric of the dresses in her new walk in closet. The POV shots will feel a bit other worldly as tall palm trees from a low angle will showcase how magical this new world is for her. Visually I hope to capture a world that is somewhere between The Florida Project meets A Star is Born and Beyond the Lights with a touch of something unexpected like Valerie and Her Week of Wonders as a textural dreamlike reference. This is a story about diaspora and what is lost between generations. I think this is a story many Latinos can relate to this as we live between many worlds and our homelands and connections to our homeland is often not too far removed, but whether we’ve lost our mother tongue or sometimes any physical connection to our país. Still we still long for it.