Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? Unpredictable events and obstacles were constant factors during the development of La Pecera (The Fishbowl). In 2017, Puerto Rico was embattled by a category 4 hurricane that caused catastrophic damage across the island and impacted the priorities of many people involved in our production. Then in 2020, a rare series of earthquakes shook the island. These two events led to […]

In La Pecera, the feature debut from writer-director Glorimar Marrero Sánchez, Noelia (Isel Rodríguez) decides to relocate to the Puerto Rican island of Vieques where she grew up after her cancer returns. Reunited with her mother and the island’s natural beauty (and traumatic past of being a U.S. Army testing ground), Noelia refuses treatment and reflects on the root of her long-term illness. DP PJ López discusses lensing the film, which included a difficult night shoot that captured bioluminescence on camera. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being […]

When Noelia’s (Isel Rodríguez) cancer returns, she eschews traditional treatments and retreats to the Puerto Rican island of Vieques where she spent her childhood. Suffering severe contamination from its use as a U.S. Army testing site (and with Hurricane Irma inching closer), Noelia grapples with the painful legacy that lingers over Vieques in La Pecera, writer-director Glorimar Marrero Sánchez’s feature debut. Editor Clara Martínez Malagelada talks about cutting La Pecera, coming on board after the film’s original editor left the project. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being […]

From the 1940s until 2003, the U.S. Navy used Vieques as a bombing range and military-training site, deploying heavy metals and toxic chemicals, such as napalm and depleted uranium, that left the island contaminated. Today, Vieques has some of the highest cancer rates in the Caribbean, though the U.S. government continues to deny that its activities are responsible. In writing La Pecera, Glorimar Marrero Sánchez sought to reflect the symptoms of colonialism both literally and symbolically, through the character of a woman whose body has been colonized by cancer—a disease, the film asserts, connected to the Navy’s pollution of Vieques. […]

Midnight Family, Luke Lorentzen’s debut feature, was adeptly shot in widescreen by the director/cinematographer/editor, as is follow-up A Still Small Voice, which represents the inverse of its predecessor in several ways. The Midnight Family were a clan of private ambulance drivers in Mexico City, filling in a public healthcare gap for profit, albeit not much of one—chasing patients for payment, eating junk food because that’s all they can afford to fuel shifts on the nocturnal streets of Mexico City, which are obviously more likely to produce memorable images than a hospital’s perpetual faux-daylight. And while Lorentzen’s main subject, Mati Engel, certainly experiences […]