Rodrigo Reyes
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Witnessing His Life Story: Rodrigo Reyes Interviews the Subject of His Doc, Sansón and Me
During his day job as a Spanish criminal interpreter in a small town in California, filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes met a young man named Sansón, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who was sentenced to life in prison without parole. With no permission to interview him, Sansón and Reyes worked together over a decade, using hundreds of letters as inspiration for recreations of Sansón’s childhood—featuring members of Sansón’s own family. The resulting film, Sansón and Me, captures the developing friendship between filmmaker and subject as they navigate both the immigration and criminal justice systems. Sansón and Me opened the new season of […]
by Rodrigo Reyes on Oct 7, 2023 -
In the Garden: Remembering Independent Film Distributor, Producer and Mentor Ray Price
I have lived longer and better than many others. I have selfishly demanded that I only do what I wanted to do—which isn’t completely true. But it is true that I have often spurned great amounts of money and stature because I believe good work is essential… The last time we spoke, I had you on speaker-phone as I made my way down the backyard garden, holding my baby in the morning sunshine, and as your words came over the cellphone, they wove into the chorus of finches chirping in the trees and the buzzing of the bumblebees joyously coating […]
by Rodrigo Reyes on Aug 18, 2023 -
“This is a Transgressive Force that Springs from the Imagination”: Rodrigo Reyes on his Tribeca-Premiering Doc Sansón and Me
The latest from “25 New Faces” alum Rodrigo Reyes, who we last spoke with for 2020’s Tribeca-selected 499, might also be his most personal and potentially fraught. The journey to Sansón and Me began a decade ago, when the Mexican-American filmmaker’s day job as a Spanish court interpreter in rural California took a turn for the tragically unexpected. Sansón Noe Andrade was a “quiet and super-polite” 19-year-old who was behind the wheel when his (even younger) brother-in-law decided to open fire on a rival from the passenger side of Sansón’s car. As a result, both teens were charged with murder. And Sansón, perhaps […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 12, 2022 -
“A Time-Traveling Conquistador Confronting Modern Mexicans”: Rodrigo Reyes on His Tribeca and Hot Docs Selected 499
499, the fourth feature film from “25 New Face” alum Rodrigo Reyes, is an epic, enchanting road movie that travels seamlessly through time (a 500-year-old journey reenacted in the present day) and space (across Mexico, from coastal Veracruz to the nation’s capital — or what used to be called Tenochtitlán back when the Aztecs claimed it as their own). Cemented by Eduardo San Juan Breña’s gripping performance as a Spanish conquistador who finds himself washed up into the future and onto modern day Mexico’s shores, the film recreates the path taken by Hernán Cortez in his 1621 quest to conquer the […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 25, 2020 -
Fortnight at the Museum: MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight
Most doc venues and festivals serve up collections, films more alike than dissimilar. In fact, the principal variable tends to be content. Now in its 13th edition, Documentary Fortnight: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media (February 14-28) is breaking new ground in doc exhibition. I’m not certain that the museum’s honchos recognize what a coup they have in situ (P.S. 1 is another story), a boundary-pushing program where many of those who follow and determine artsy trending might not think to look. It’s taken far too long for documentaries to be considered hip, but to think of them […]
by Howard Feinstein on Feb 11, 2014 -
“25 New Face” Rodrigo Reyes on Purgatorio (+ Trailer Premiere)
There’s no lack of films and TV shows focusing on Mexican-American relationships mediated by the border, their focus most commonly on the never-ending drug wars. On TV, The Bridge and Breaking Bad criss-cross between the two countries, mapping out mayhem and violence, as do recent documentaries like 2010’s El Sicario, Room 164, 2011’s El Velador and this year’s Narco Cultura. 2013 “25 New Face” Rodrigo Reyes’ Purgatorio is a different kind of border movie, beginning with footage of rural Mexico as the director urges us, in voiceover, to “try to imagine what the world was like, many, many years ago. Try to […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 6, 2013 -
Rodrigo Reyes
Growing up in Mexico City, Rodrigo Reyes was, in his words, “solidly middle-class.” When he was six, his family moved to the small California town of Merced, and for the first time, he considered his own identity as a Mexican. When the family returned to Mexico, Reyes realized that (as he explained in an email), “There was a part of me that was solidly American and did not fit in back home either.” His films — including 2011’s experimental Memories of the Future and Purgatorio, a Journey Into the Heart of the Border, his latest documentary — are centered around […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 15, 2013
