Author-director Luis Fernando Puente discovered inspiration for his Sundance Movie Pageant debut movie near house — from his spouse, Lizde Arias.
“It’s based mostly off of my spouse’s inexperienced card interview,” Puente mentioned. “We have been each in that room. The interview portion of it’s virtually phrase for phrase, [it’s] very true to life.”
The Utah-based filmmaker made his brief movie, “I Have No Tears, and I Should Cry,” in Orem. The movie follows the fictionalized model of Arias, a Mexican immigrant named Maria Luisa (performed by Mexican actor Alejandra Herrera), throughout a tense interview to safe her inexperienced card.
Clocking in at 13 minutes, the film is genuine and obligatory, capturing the arduous and nerve-wracking course of immigrants undergo.
“After I instructed individuals I’m gonna make a transfer about an interview, it [didn’t] sound like a lot,” Puente mentioned. “In actuality, to have the ability to painting a sense of stress and nervousness was a problem.”
(Sundance Institute) Utah-based filmmaker Luis Fernando Puente, director of “I Have No Extra Tears, and I Should Cry,” an official choice within the short-film program of the 2023 Sundance Movie Pageant.
The film offers with the notion that there’s a “proper” or “excellent” method that immigrants ought to behave and reply questions of their interviews. That concept relies on a course of that hasn’t been up to date in a long time, Puente mentioned, and doesn’t “meet the calls for of the fashionable world.”
“What the immigration course of is like these days, it’s sophisticated. It’s a really lengthy course of,” Puente mentioned.
Each case is totally different, and ought to be dealt with that method, Puente mentioned. In Arias’s scenario, she was searching for a inexperienced card on the idea of being married to Puente, a U.S. resident. (Puente was born in Monterrey, Mexico, and moved to Texas as a toddler. He finally got here to Provo, to review media arts at Brigham Younger College.)
“The way in which that individuals are technically documented and such generally is a fairly grueling course of,” Puente mentioned.
One of many challenges of constructing his brief movie was that he filmed near house, in Orem. The job of recreating a USCIS workplace was difficult, he mentioned, as a result of “there’s not a whole lot of locations which have that previous look to them which are obtainable for individuals to movie.”
Puente had some Sundance expertise in his nook. The movie’s cinematographer, Oscar Ignacio Jiménez, has labored with BYU professor and filmmaker Robert Machoian on two Sundance entries: The 2019 brief “The Minors,” and the acclaimed 2020 marriage drama “The Killing of Two Lovers,” which was shot in Kanosh, Utah.
Arias was concerned in placing the movie collectively, Puente mentioned, notably within the casting course of. When Puente confirmed his spouse an audition tape of actor Cherie Julander, he mentioned, she gasped audibly due to the nuance Julander delivered to her studying of the immigration officer’s position. Julander gained the audition.
(Sundance Institute) Cherie Julander performs an immigration official interviewing a Mexican lady searching for a inexperienced card, in director Luis Fernando Puente’s “I Have No Extra Tears, and I Should Cry,” an official choice within the short-film program of the 2023 Sundance Movie Pageant.
Puente mentioned he hopes his movie will assist others achieve a way of empathy towards immigrants.
“There are numerous occasions when individuals speak about immigrants and so they don’t actually notice who they’re speaking about,” he mentioned. “Whereas every of us has a distinct story, and a distinct expertise, immigrants can establish with this movie. People who find themselves not immigrants can have a look at this and see one thing that they simply haven’t seen earlier than.”
Puente mentioned that along with his present work, he desires to focus on the expertise of immigrants in the USA, and what they could undergo to seek out their place on this nation. His Sundance debut does precisely that.
“I Have No Tears, and I Should Cry” screens in Shorts Program 5 on the 2023 Sundance Movie Pageant. It’s scheduled to display screen: Monday, 11:55 a.m., Prospector Sq. Theatre, Park Metropolis; Wednesday, 4 p.m., Redstone Cinemas, Park Metropolis; Friday, 5:30 p.m., on the Megaplex Theatres at The Gateway, Salt Lake Metropolis; and Saturday, 6:15 p.m., Broadway Centre Cinemas, Salt Lake Metropolis. This system additionally can be obtainable to display screen Tuesday on the pageant’s on-line portal.