The feature film Norte and the short film Apnea, by directors Natalia Bermúdez and Franco Bautista, were among the film selections introduced at the Guanajuato International Film Festival. Both referred to the production process and announced they are preparing new content for cinema and platforms.
“Norte took us five years to produce. It is about the journey of Natalia and her brother, with whom she had no contact because his addictions split her family. He decides to rehabilitate; they travel to the North, becoming a reunion between brothers,” Bautista said.
Apnea is a story about a swimmer who has a secret relationship with her swimming coach: “It is a story that hides a lot of manipulation, power play, but that has a twist when she decides to take revenge on her coach,” added the director, who has also worked as a photographer and writer in series projects for platforms such as Cenizas de la Gloria, directed by Everardo González; Marea Alta for ViX (as writer) and for the Italian production Stories of the Generation (as director and photographer).
According to Bermúdez, due to the platforms, we should return to quality content, which Netflix imposed when it arrived on the market. “We must stop believing that the public deserves junk content. When Netflix came along, we started doing quality things, but now with so many projects needed, we went back to low quality and to what we previously did.”
Hence, tools such as photography have played a central role in content production. “It is good to have visual proposals behind what we see and to start training the audience to consume quality things.”
They mentioned that they have different projects together in the pipeline, including two fiction films, and a series, which are still confidential.