In August 2022, the Franciscan Network for Migrants signed an agreement with the Mexico City International Documentary Film Festival, better known as DocsMX, a non-profit civil association that houses the Good Pitch program, and effort to bring together documentary filmmakers with key actors to promote social change.
This collaboration arose from the link with Franciscans International, an ally of the Network, and Mariana Marín, producer of the film’s impact campaign. My Home is Somewhere Else is part of the second edition of Good Pitch México 2022. This alliance seeks to promote the issue of migration through art and culture, disseminating audiovisual material in the various migrant sheleters and centers.
The directors of the documentary, Carlos Hagerman and Jorge Villalobos, together with one of the protagonists, José Eduardo, “the Deportee” and Daniela Cosme from Otros Dreams en Acción, gave an enriching interview to the Franciscan Network during a visit to Tenosique, Tabasco, Mexico, for the screening at La 72 Migrant and Refugee Shelter.
Good afternoon Jorge, Carlos, Eduardo and Daniela. Thank you very much for coming to Tenosique to show the film My Home is Somewhere Else at La 72. The Franciscan Network for Migrants is very happy that this is underway. Let’s start with introductions.
Carlos: I am Carlos Hagerman, co-director with Jorge of the film My Home is Somewhere Else, and I am also a producer of the film.
Jorge: Jorge Villalobos, co-director of My Home is Somewhere Else.
Eduardo: I’m Eduardo Aguilar, I’m a story teller, protagonist and also spoken word poet of My Home is Somewhere Else.
Nice to meet you. One of the first questions that interests the Franciscan Network for Migrants is what motivated you to produce a film that talks about people in forced migration? You have a history working with the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights and on Channel 11, and you have had projects related to various cultural issues.
Jorge: Yes, we have a studio called Brinca Taller de Animación that was founded eleven years ago and from the beginning we made it clear that we wanted to use animation to talk about topics that we consider to be important, to talk about them, but animation helps these types of topics to be told from other perspectives; it refreshes the topic and can also make it more accessible for certain audiences. During these years, we collaborated with the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights. We did our first project, a children’s series called El chango y la chancla (The Monkey and the Slipper) which was a series that dealt with educational issues and intra-family relationships. We have worked for the UN and for UNICEF, in the spirit of the study. And the particular project of My Home is Somewhere Else arose when I was, well.…Carlos has a documentary career of a few years, and he has made many films that deal with the issue of family, but all in the context of immigration. And six years ago, when the idea for this film came up, I was in Miami. Trump had just won, my wife is a journalist. So, I was very close to everything, and it was like this conversation was in everything. I was very alert because we were looking for themes to make a film. And we saw a documentary by Jorge Ramos, a journalist who is in Miami, who interviewed children who are United States citizens, but with undocumented parents, and they told of the fear they had of their parents’ deportation. That story and, above all, a story told by children, caught our attention and we said “we have to tell these stories, we have to talk about this,” But apart from that we have to give a voice to younger people, not that the narrative stays only with adults, but it was important for us to tell what happens in the childhood of families that experience these sometimes very, very violent processes of migration and of deportation.
And so we approached the first family we met, Jasmine’s, who is the protagonist of the first story. She was living at the time, and is still in Florida, and she told us this story. It was similar to what we had seen in the documentary, but apart from that, it had this extra element that she had become involved with an activist organization and had gone to the White House to fight and defend her parents, and that was the origin of this story, of this film.
And how was the contact with Carlos? Did you share the idea or how did these three stories come about?
Carlos: Well, Jorge and I have been… How long will it be? Let’s round it off, because I’ve been married thirty years and I knew you before Victoria. Thirty years of being friends, of working together. And eleven years ago, we decided to set up this studio with this intention, to do animation, and recount stories that were relevant. For my part, I divided my time between the animation studio and continuing to make documentary films. Fourteen years ago, I made a documentary called “Los que se quedan” (Those Who Stay Behind), co-directed with Juan Carlos Rulfo about the emotional cost of migration in Mexico. And so we portray the life of six families for a year in different parts of the republic. One of those stories is from a family in a small town in Yucatan called Dzoncauich. The story, what happened to this family, is that they decided to leave town and go to join their father who was in California. The end of the film is this woman who leaves with her three daughters and a small child and they get on a bus and we know that they are going to live in the United States.
Two of those girls are the protagonists of the story of the two sisters, Evelyn and Elizabeth. So it is a relationship that I have maintained with this family for more than fifteen years and I realized that they wanted to tell their story when we met in Los Angeles. Usually when I traveled to Los Angeles, where they live, we would get together to eat, to hang out a bit. That time they were very restless: they were finishing high school and their expectations for the future were very much at odds with their status. I asked them if they wanted to talk about this and they said yes, and we started doing the interviews. Since we were starting the project with the story of Jasmine, I spoke to Jorge and asked him if it was a good idea to continue with this story. Then we reviewed the first interview we did with them and we thought it was a good complement to the film.
And how was the contact with you, Eduardo? The approach to the film and your participation?
Eduardo: Well, I met Carlos at a film festival in DocsMx, in 2019, because he was working on a documentary that I directed that talks about return migration. There I met Carlos and he told me that he was working on this project. As I always say, it didn’t interest me at first, I didn’t want to participate, but for several months he was sending messages. And one of those messages was a demo of the story of the two sisters, and with that I was hooked because it talks about childhoods in migrant movement. In my work that I have been doing as an artist, as a storyteller, I don’t talk about my childhood, I talk more about my life post-deportation. It was very nice to imagine me and my brother animated. From there, well, he hooked me and I said “I’m in.” We started working together during the pandemic. I remember that Carlos got me an Uber to see us in a particular place to work on the sound. We already did the interviews via zoom and it was almost a whole year of interviewing.
Almost in the last interviews, I told him, “hey, but I also write poetry so maybe they can be included in my part of the story.” And from there the idea occurred to them that we could collaborate in another way, in the artistic question of poetry. So I said again, “okay, I’m in,” that’s how we met at the film festival because I was there.
Thank you, Eduardo. And what has been the reception internationally? Because it is a film of consciousness-raising and awareness. And what do you also expect with this film? Since 2022 it has already been presented at a festival and the promotion has continued for another year.
Carlos: Everything that has to do with festivals, with prizes and participating at an international level is always with the aim of making this film known, making it known and opening spaces for it to meet its objectives. What we would like is for the film to be available to the communities that are portrayed.
On the one hand, we have had events in the United States. Also, we were at the San Diego Latino Festival, where an organization that is made up of first generation Americans, from immigrant families, sponsored it. The entire theater was filled with families, and it was a very nice showing. I felt that the representation in the film had moved them a lot. We would be so happy to have these kinds of spaces opened up to us, both in communities where families like those represented live, and also to penetrate other types of audiences that are not represented, so that they have this experience and gain a more empathetic perspective of these stories.
Jorge: It makes me curious that the show that we are going to have today with the support of the Franciscan Network. It is the result of the first meeting that we had when we traveled to Geneva for an festival of impact campaigns, which is a very important part of this film. Now, more than a year later, that meeting is bearing fruit, but it is capitalizing on and creating a distribution network as an alternative to what people usually understand about movies that are in theaters, the internet, Netflix, or at festivals, and it is very important that we continue building these ways of taking the film to audiences who may not ever have access to this kind of film.
Carlos: I see that on the one hand there is the distribution and on the other hand, there is what are now called impact campaigns. The difference is that the distribution is like an impulse where you want the film to be seen by as many people as possible and the impact campaign is how to take the film as a project so that it is can be seen by certain audiences, certain very specific audiences that you think there is value in the film reaching, and it no longer matters how many people see the film, but that this film reaches those spaces.
Also for the Franciscan Network it is very important. In the first instance, we discussed with Mariana if the film could be screened beyond Mexico, if it could be in the other seven countries of the Franciscan Network, in the United States, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, Brazil. For the latter, there is the situation of the subtitles, but a way can be found. You always show us your willingness, the important thing is that it transcends borders because that is what it is made for.
Precisely, our colleague Alejandra from La 72 who advocates on the migrant route with people coming from Guatemala to Tenosique, asked if the film could be lent to her for World Refugee Day and Mariana said yes because that is what it was made for, so that human rights defenders can watch it and thus learn a little more about this issue and continue to raise awareness among the population.
Eduardo, what has it meant to you that your story, your voice, has been featured in the film and is screened in several countries?
Eduardo: I always say that for me it is very important that beyond my story, that they also see me as a creator, as a creative, as a storyteller, to see that people on the move are also creating, writing, making music, photography. So, for me it’s important to position myself not only as a protagonist, but also as a storyteller. What I want with this is that other people who are on the move and see the film can see themselves and say “Oh, I can write too” or “I also want to do what he’s doing, I can write even cooler rhymes than him.” That’s what I want, for them to see themselves beyond their context of mobility. That’s my focus.
Daniela, what has it been like for you to participate with Brinca Taller from your organization, and then come to La 72 to be part of this impact campaign?
Daniela: I have been representing Otros Dreams en Acción, an organization that is located in Mexico City, but that advocates throughout the country, both in Mexico and in the United States. We are an organization for and by returned and deported people.
Advocacy work is carried out and also, as Eduardo commented a moment ago, community and creative work by insisting that people on the move, migrants, are creators. We have the ability to tell our own stories and we have the creativity and tools to do so and position ourselves as creators. It is a bit of the work that is done from ODA and I have been accompanying Eduardo in the part of the workshops that will take place after the performance where we are going to invite people to participate, write their own poems and work in the spoken word format.
Finally, do you have any other project in mind about context situations of people in forced mobility or are you only concentrating on “My Home is Somewhere Else”?
Jorge: Yes, just as we were saying, all this work of taking the film and creating a distribution network in places like where we are now, but also in the United States, is, in itself, a project. We do not ever want to say that the film is already out of theaters or no longer on the internet. Even if you save it on your disk or on your bookshelf, if doesn’t mean that film no longer has a life. It is very current; the stories that are told continue to be seen and have an impact on people, and that will last a long time. Brinca’s most important project is to keep this film moving and for this network to grow.
Carlos: Above all, we do not pretend that we can cover the impact needs that a film like this can have, but little by little organizations that already have impact projects, programs with the communities can see in this film a tool for their own objectives. And then, as has happened with the Franciscan Network, and now we are also talking with the Jesuit Network. They know about the film and if they can use it for their own objectives, the film is also there for that.
In the first semester of 2023 the events will be in Mexico, but we hope that for the next six months we can start with the projections in the other countries. It is essential to emphasize that the projections are in the homes of migrants and they are always in constant flux. For this reason, the stories will always be current: separation of families, deportation, refuge.
For the RFM it is very gratifying that the film can be shared with us and we can distribute it to all those who are interested in the issue of migration and thus raise awareness of this whole situation.
Eduardo: The film is based on families, stories between Mexico and the United States, but just what you are commenting on using the film in other countries is also very important, because the same thing happens between families, Guatemala/United States, El Salvador/United States or Guatemala/Mexico. And there are also many people in those Central American countries who are going through the return migration process and can identify, not only the people who are on the move and also the people who are on the move in these spaces as well. There are boys and girls born in the United States who are on the move with their parents going back. There are many ways that the film can connect and reach people.
Thank you, Eduardo, thank you very much for your time. We hope that the event at La 72 will turn out wonderfully. Our colleagues, the La 72 director Fray Ricardo and our partner Alejandra, when we proposed the event, we asked them if they had the space and time to receive youbecause the team and the volunteers always have many activities and of course, they gracefully accepted.
Thank you for your making the time to be at the event and the workshop.
We hope to see you soon. Thank you so much.