Director’s Statement
Cafe Cicatriz came from the pandemic's darkest days of uncertainty and despair. My daughter was 2 years old and the President was tear gassing kids at a church. I had a Google Sheets for our home rations out of fear that supply chains might break and I was getting targeted with banner ads for tactical pants. And most importantly, I worried that my utility as a storyteller wouldn't be highly valued in our return to a hunter-gatherer society.
I wondered who in the world might somehow be okay at a time like this?
Who might feel equipped for the disconnection and uncertainty?
Years later, while in Santiago, Chile to shoot a commercial, I met an amazing community of filmmakers who agreed to produce this story as a small movie.
I convinced my 1st AD that he could play our lead in what was his first acting performance. His real-life girlfriend, Lourdes, became the film’s Lourdes. It was an extremely intimate, handmade film that helped me exorcize some of the residual despair of those early pandemic days. We tried to make something that feels totally human; that treats 'the other' as a fully emotional person; and maybe inspires some pain and laughter.
