Domin­ga Sotomay­or: ​‘I want­ed emo­tions, not big events’

Domin­ga Sotomayor’s impres­sive third fea­ture, Too Late To Die Young, sees her return­ing home, from Argenti­na to Chile. Trav­el­ling back in time to the end of the 1980s, the film presents a cross-sec­tion of a non-tra­di­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, fol­low­ing a small clus­ter of fam­i­lies attempt­ing to live self suf­fi­cient­ly out­side of Santiago’s city lim­its. She talks here about the role of the film’s loca­tion, a com­mune con­struct­ed specif­i­cal­ly for the film, and what it means to her and to the char­ac­ters in the film.

I want­ed to ask first about the loca­tion of the film. Where is it first­ly, and what does that place means to you, if anything?

For me, the loca­tion is the main char­ac­ter. The most per­son­al thing about the film is this place. I grew up in a com­mu­ni­ty that is sim­i­lar, so there are ele­ments of the place I grew up in. When democ­ra­cy arrived to Chile in 1989, my par­ents decid­ed to move to a com­mune that was still being con­struct­ed. We were liv­ing with about ten oth­er fam­i­lies, with­out elec­tric­i­ty or phones. It was very spe­cial. Twen­ty years lat­er I was liv­ing there by myself and I realised how much had changed. It couldn’t be as it was in my child­hood. There were around 400 hous­es, it was full of people.

So it became more like a real city?

Yeah, more mod­ern. I want­ed to make a film where the time and the space was very clear. I built this new com­mu­ni­ty to be sim­i­lar but not the same, a space where the lim­its are not clear.

So it’s not a real com­mune where peo­ple live?

Now, yeah it’s a real com­mu­ni­ty. We built some­thing to resem­ble a com­mune as it would have looked in the begin­ning, in the ​’90s. Decem­ber 1989, Pinochet was kicked out, the dic­ta­tor­ship end­ed. That par­tic­u­lar sum­mer was when my par­ents decid­ed to move to this place. In March, the first demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent start­ed, and until Decem­ber there was noth­ing. It was a tran­si­tion­al peri­od, which formed the inspi­ra­tion for the film.

Did your par­ents move then because they had the free­dom to do so, or because they were opt­ing out of the new soci­ety, or nei­ther of those things?

It was just when democ­ra­cy arrived that they decid­ed to move, but we nev­er thought of in that way then. Now, with time, it feels obvi­ous that it was an exile. The city was very grey and there were look­ing for a place that they could build for them­selves. My moth­er is an actress, and those around her were all involved in cul­ture, which there was no space for in the city. What was inter­est­ing for me was that it was out­side of def­i­n­i­tions. It’s not like a com­mu­ni­ty with its own clear ide­olo­gies and rules. You can­not real­ly describe or define it, it was just a pos­si­bil­i­ty for a dif­fer­ent life, to be close to nature and freer. The start­ing point had to do with these per­me­able lim­its between exte­ri­or and inte­ri­or, between nature and human­i­ty, and between fem­i­nin­i­ty and mas­culin­i­ty. It was play­ing with these digressions

So you start­ed with the loca­tion, and built the char­ac­ters and the sto­ries around the place?

Actu­al­ly, I start­ed with the fire. There was a real for­est fire when I was lit­tle, when I was five year old. I nev­er saw the fire because I was in a water tank, think­ing I would be safe there. It was a big thing for a child to expe­ri­ence, there was lots of screams and com­mo­tion. Then 25 years lat­er I found these VHS tapes that our neigh­bour had record­ed of the fire. I saw the fire for the first time. When I saw it, it was the start­ing point of my film. I could imag­ine the burn­ing, the smoke ris­ing in this remote place, but what most attract­ed me was the idea of a group of women and chil­dren try­ing to fight against the fire with trees, which is in the film. it was so absurd that these peo­ple tried to retreat from the city, only to be met with nature. It’s about going back to nature, but nature is what ulti­mate­ly caus­es them damage.

It’s the illu­sion of a new world, but in real­i­ty they are repro­duc­ing the same things, as humans tend to do.

There’s all sorts of things behind the film then: the dic­ta­tor­ship; the new democ­ra­cy. But they are not direct­ly in the film – they aren’t men­tioned. They may be in the tex­ture of the film, or briefly men­tioned in con­ver­sa­tion, but it’s background.

Was this always the inten­tion, to not have these things as plot points, but some­thing in the air?

Yeah, I want­ed to cap­ture the spir­it of this tran­si­tion. I want­ed to look at its emo­tion­al impact on the char­ac­ters, rather through some­thing con­crete. I think the film is time­less also. My inspi­ra­tion is the ​’90s, and this one spe­cif­ic sum­mer, but real­ly it could be any oth­er sum­mer. This is a polit­i­cal posi­tion. We thought democ­ra­cy would be the solu­tion, but found out it was just anoth­er cir­cle. There’s a con­tin­u­al hope for a new beginning.

The film is cir­cu­lar too. It could be an instal­la­tion. The dog is the start and the end.

Yeah, it’s like a cir­cle for me. It was impor­tant that one lay­er would be about these teenagers who love too ear­ly, who expe­ri­ence illu­sions, but the oth­er lay­er is the ado­les­cence of the coun­try, with all this pain and this desire to restart. Also New Year’s Eve has this feel­ing – it’s like a reset. I like what is in-between. I like work­ing with scenes that don’t add up. In these moments – these inter­sec­tions between impor­tant things – you can dip into emo­tions. I want­ed emo­tions, not big events.

How did you cast the film, and once you knew who would be in the film, how did you work out their rela­tion­ship to one another?

It was like a big tree, with lots of points con­nect­ing peo­ple. It’s a film about non-cor­re­spon­dence as well: every­body wants some­thing they don’t have. So it was messy, but it was also clear. We had to work out the rela­tions first. For the cast­ing, it was chal­leng­ing as I decid­ed to work with non-pro­fes­sion­al kids. We made a call for kids cur­rent­ly liv­ing in a com­mune. We chose 10 kids and 10 teenagers, made a work­shop where we make music and play games. From this, we select­ed the main char­ac­ters, then got the remain­ing kids to play the oth­ers. We didn’t want to reject any­one. Theres also pro­fes­sion­al actors, adults with­out any expe­ri­ence, Sofia includ­ed. It was a ran­dom and eclec­tic cast­ing. I didn’t rehearse much, but I tried to bring them into the same world.

And how did you work with the actor who plays Sofia (Demi­an Hernán­dez)? Did the two of you work out the char­ac­ter togeth­er, and how did that char­ac­ter become the one who is the clos­est thing to a pro­tag­o­nist in the film?

It was always like this. I think at the edit­ing, Sofia became clear­er. I want­ed Sofia, Clara and Lucas to be equal, but Sofia’s char­ac­ter became more promi­nent in the end. Dami­an was a friend of a girl­friend of my broth­er, so very close, and had nev­er act­ed before. I don’t think you can cre­ate com­plex­i­ty, you can just por­tray com­plex­i­ty. When I met her (Dami­an is now tran­si­tion­ing), I had this feel­ing she had lived more that most peo­ple her age.

As a per­son you mean?

Yeah, I saw things were hap­pen­ing there. I could sense some tur­moil. I didn’t give them a script, we were work­ing scene by scene, very per­son­al­ly. It was a real­ly per­son­al rela­tion­ship and I worked with them in a very close way. It’s inter­est­ing because after mak­ing the film Dami­an was going to be tran­si­tion­ing, which was some­thing I didn’t know about before.

It wasn’t some­thing hap­pen­ing dur­ing the filming?

It wasn’t dur­ing the film. It’s not a theme of the film either, but it makes a lot of sense, because the film con­tains a lot of tran­si­tions, and you can see that some­thing very strong is hap­pen­ing to her.

Was it shot some years ago then?

No, last year (2017), in March and April. He said that through the way we worked on the cam­era, he was con­nect­ing with his own sense of tur­moil, and going through the film helped him to under­stand what was going on.

It was anoth­er work­shop in a way?

Yes, Dami­an told me before Locarno, ​‘This film is the last por­trait of me as a girl. But I will pre­mière it as a boy.’ We’ve been togeth­er for the whole process, and the premieres.

Just out of inter­est, then, has this become more of a con­ver­sa­tion than the film? Does it get asked about it a lot?

Peo­ple do ask a lot, and I have doubts. I’d pre­fer peo­ple don’t know about it in advance, because it might cre­ate some expec­ta­tion about the film. In Chile, It’s del­i­cate. His grand­moth­er doesn’t know.

I was think­ing about mem­o­ry a lot, it’s your mem­o­ries, but the char­ac­ters seem con­scious of the process of mem­o­ry mak­ing. How does mem­o­ry work for you in rela­tion to film?

I have a very bad mem­o­ry. I want­ed to cap­ture things I am for­get­ting. I think the film plays with mem­o­ry on many lev­els, its a mem­o­ry of a peri­od of time in the coun­try. It’s the emo­tion­al mem­o­ry of what was hap­pen­ing with the peo­ple at the time. It’s also a cap­ture of time for me, but one that is blur­ry, and for the char­ac­ters, all of them are going from one place to anoth­er, where they need to learn how to lose something.

I think the struc­ture of the film works like mem­o­ry too, jump­ing from one sig­nif­i­cant thing to anoth­er, and some­times stay­ing on things are insignif­i­cant too, but remain in the mem­o­ry. All togeth­er some­thing is built. Mem­o­ry is a fic­tion, you don’t real­ly remem­ber things as they are. This is a film about the past, but it is remem­bered from the present. It’s a mem­o­ry in present time.

Read our review of Too Late to Die Young here.