By Jeremy Nigro
“With a feature film, you can go crazy with the amount of choices that you have to make,” Alejandro Guzman Alvarez says with a laugh. Having been an assistant director for some years, Alvarez found the transition to the role of director to be a natural step, but one not without its stresses. “I got older doing this picture, just a little bit, but I think it’s a good thing,” he smiles. “That’s because of the stress, of course, but also because you’re entering into a new world. You put your heart and soul into it. It was a very good experience for me, but very exhausting too. I’m happy with how it turned out.”
Walking Distance follows Federico (Luca Ortega), a socially isolated, morbidly obese man who discovers an old camera with film inside it. What follows is a beautiful story about friendship and art, as Federico tries to pursue his love of photography despite being constrained by his physical and social limitations.
There are many elements of Walking Distance which feel new and refreshing, not just with Guzman’s direction, but also with the script and the actors themselves. Guzman reflects on how he came upon the script: “I have a friend who is a very important screenwriter in Mexico. I asked him for a script, and he recommended Itzel [Lara]. He said, ‘She’s a very good writer, and she’s got a very good story called Walking Distance.’ So I talked to her, and she sent me the script. I read it in one night. The truth is, I couldn’t sleep because of this beautiful story.”
The script is Itzel Lara’s first, and she was keen to see the story on the screen. So what drew Guzman to the story? “Federico is a very particular character, because there are a lot of movies with these chubby guys,” the director replies. “Almost all of these movies are comedies, and they make a joke out of them. The most interesting thing about the character for me was that he doesn’t want to be thin; he just doesn’t worry about it. It’s about this guy who discovers this old camera, and he wants to know what images are on the film. I liked that he became a photographer. Before I was a director, I was a photographer. I found a lot of things in me in the story.”
Guzman knew that his biggest task would be finding the right actor to play Federico, because there weren’t any actors like that in Mexico. “A friend and I went to a lot of hospitals because I wanted to work with a real person who suffered from morbid obesity. So we went and interviewed a lot of people. There were many people who would have been very interesting to do the part, but the bad thing was that most of them weren’t very good actors. I spent two months trying to find an actor to play Federico’s part.”
A chance meeting at a party led to the discovery of Luca Ortega. “One night, my photographer called me,” Guzman says. “She was at a film party, and there was this guy who was playing the drums, and she immediately called me on the phone and said, ‘Hey Alejandro, there’s this guy that you can maybe use in your movie. His name is Luca Ortega’.”
Guzman did a bit of research, and discovered that Ortega was the drummer of a well-known Mexican band, as well as working as a composer on several films. They set up a meeting a few weeks later, and Ortega agreed to the part on the one condition that he also be the composer on the film. “I had to do a test first, so I set up the scene where Federico has the camera and takes the selfie. He did it perfectly, and very naturally. It was fantastic from the first take. But we did another take, and he did it even better than the first take. The third take was just as good, so I said, ‘Okay, this is the guy.’ That’s how we found Luca.”
Guzman opens up about how difficult it is to be a filmmaker in Mexico, and all the things that went right for the film to be made. “My old film school runs this contest with ex-students where you can put a project in, and if you win it, they give you the money to produce the film. So I put the film in this contest and it won. They gave me the money and helped to produce the film. In Mexico, it’s very, very tough. It takes three, four, five and sometimes eight years to make a movie. This project had a kind of magic…all the doors were open.”
Walking Distance will premiere at The Sydney Latin American Film Festival, and Guzman describes how important these events are to filmmakers. “The real window that we have as filmmakers is through international festivals like Sydney, or Cannes,” Guzman asserts. “We’ve had more screenings out of Mexico than in, but it makes a good name for the film here in Mexico. We have distribution now, so we are going to premiere the film here in Mexico in January. That’s because the movie made noise in other countries, and Mexico got interested because of that. There’s a lot of good publicity around the world. So it’s very, very important for your film to get exposure in other countries. That’s how you get a good name.”
Walking Distance screens at The Sydney Latin American Film Festival, which runs from September 8-12. For more on Walking Distance, head to the official website.
