Bruno Santamaría on ‘Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building’

World premiering at Cannes’ Critics’ Week on May 19, Bruno Santamaría Razo’s film “Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building” (“Seis Meses en el Edificio Rosa con Azul”) is set in early ’90s Mexico where 11-year-old Bruno navigates the ups and downs of childhood and begins to question his sexuality. He learns that his father has been diagnosed with HIV, which sends his family into a spiral and forces each member to deal with the pain in their own way.

30 years later, Bruno turns the memory of his childhood experiences into a film about a family’s determination to stay strong in the face of adversity.

“Making a film and showing it is the act that completes it — that is when the film truly comes into existence. Doing it for the first time is always a celebration and doing it at Critics’ Week is an immense gift because of the care the film receives from the moment it is invited. It feels consistent with the way we made the film,” Santamaría told Variety.

Santamaría previously worked as a cinematographer and documentary director. His documentary “Things We Dare Not Do” won the Gold Hugo Award at the Chicago International Film Festival and the Grand Prize at BAFICI. A Mexico/Brazil/Denmark production, Santamaría is excited to be in Cannes with his first fiction film.

“A Mexican feature had not premiered at Critics’ Week in 20 years, and that made the whole team very happy. It also made the Mexican Film Institute, IMCINE, very happy,” Santamaría said.

The cast includes Jade Reyes, Sofía Espinosa, Lázaro Gabino Rodriguez, Eduardo Ayala, Valeria Vanegas, Anuar Vera, Teresa Sánchez, Valentina Cohen, Nara Carreira and Demick Lopes.

The film was produced by Ojo de Vaca and co-produced by Desvia (O Último Azul), and Snowglobe (*Hlynur Pálmason, The Love That Remains), with the support of Field of Vision, Hubert Bals Fund, CTT Exp & Rentals, and Chemistry.

“Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building” won the Best Project Award and the DALE! Award at the San Sebastián Co-Production Forum. It was also pre-bought by France’s Canal+ at the Cinéma en Construction Toulouse. International Sales are being handled by Luxbox.

Variety spoke with Santamaría before the world premiere in Cannes.

Love the title.  How did you choose it?

Santamaría: Thank you for saying that. When I begin imagining a project that I know I’ll be navigating for a long time, the title is usually one of the first things that appears. It helps me a lot to have a title because it becomes a lighthouse, a kind of guide that helps me make decisions. It arrives almost like an intuition, and I try to trust it. In this case, I knew very clearly that the film was framed within a specific period of time, and I also knew it was delimited by a space. The pink and blue came from a feeling, something connected to my memory.

You mix fiction, documentary and even animation in the film.  Did you get any pushback for mixing genres and did you see it as a risk by not making a traditional film?

Santamaría: I always knew the film would play with language. I’m interested in cinema not only as a medium to tell something, but also as a tool for exploration, for searching, getting lost, and then, after finding something, sharing both the process and the result.

The interviews and staged scenes were always there from the beginning. While writing the script, there was some fear about how a screenplay written in first person, in the form of a story, would be received — especially the interview sections, which were written hypothetically and conditionally, like: “Maybe my mother will have a huge smile, like a little girl’s, because she’ll be nervous that I’m going to interview her. And perhaps I’ll ask her if she’s nervous, and I think she might say no, but her smile, which may grow even larger, will reveal otherwise — that yes, she is nervous.”

I was lucky to work with Carlos and Bruna, two producer friends who embraced these decisions, who accepted the risks and were willing to get lost alongside me and the entire crew and jump into the void. Of course, they jumped with eighty parachutes — very prepared — but still willing to leap in order to make the film appear.

So yes, there was a kind of resistance, because the film and the script could seem strange, and some people wanted to normalize it, to fit it into a genre. “What is this? Fiction or documentary? Why is it written in first person? Why are there drawings?” But Bruna and Carlos helped me consolidate the unique form that our film was asking for.

What was your family’s reaction to the film? 

Santamaría: It was very beautiful. There was laughter, nervous laughter, lots of nervous laughter, and also tears. But the most beautiful and moving thing for me is that they say they don’t remember, or that they are certain the things I show in the film never happened in their lives — that they never said those kinds of lines, that they didn’t necessarily have those kinds of relationships, that those dynamics or neighbors didn’t really exist.

They say it is fiction, and yet while watching the film they were still able to see themselves, feel themselves, and remember. Something in the film spoke to them, something made them feel and reflect. And even if it was through Lázaro, Jade, Sofía, or Anuar, my family saw themselves in those characters, projected themselves onto them, and were able to enjoy it.

You say your father was very loving and sensitive, which was not the norm in his generation. Do you think men are generally becoming more like your father in Mexico?

Santamaría: I was fortunate to grow up with a mother who paid close attention to raising her children with discipline around health, sports, and work, with a deep love for life, with the idea of never giving up, to leave no stone unturned. And I was fortunate to be raised by a father who was playful, sensitive, open, and devoted to his children, who cared about telling us stories, about dreaming and sharing his dreams, who believes in ghosts and extraterrestrials, who says he has seen them and even draws them.

For me, it was always very curious that the kind of sensitivity my father had was associated with homosexuality. I myself once asked my father if he was gay, and now, with distance, I laugh about it,  about how prejudiced I was, how I wanted to fit him into a model of masculinity I recognized from television, from my uncles, from teachers.

There are many different kinds of Mexican men. And although each of us has the possibility of defining who we are, we are also shaped by our context. As long as the context remains oppressive, with so much social injustice, without freedom for everyone, without free time or space for leisure, I think it is very difficult for a real transformation to happen.

How do you think society’s view of homosexuality has changed in Mexico in the last 30 years?

There are many different views on homosexuality in Mexico, shaped by class differences, by access to education, by different opportunities to observe and question the world. But even so, I would dare to say that, in general, there is still a lot of homophobia, transphobia, LGBTT+ phobia, and fear toward everything that does not flow within what dominant agendas and propaganda dictate.

And this even exists within artistic and intellectual circles, where one might imagine there would be more time to develop critical thought. So I don’t think things have changed enough for people to feel freedom instead of fear when showing themselves as different from what is expected of them from birth, where, in order to identify you, people must choose between a pink ribbon or a blue one.

Do you think Lázaro Gabino Rodriguez captured the essence of your father? 

Santamaría: I’m deeply impressed by Lázaro’s ability to tell stories. He’s passionate about it, he does it while working, while preparing for work, when you meet him for lunch, and even during parties. He has a beautiful ability to share what he thinks, what he feels, what he observes, and he never stops doing it, always with humor, good skills, and sensitivity. I fell in love with that about him from the first time I saw him in a theater play, and then even more when I got to know him personally. That particular quality made me think a lot about my father when he was young, not so much because of his physical appearance, but because of his energy and his beauty.

When I watch the film, and when my family watches it, even though the mise-en-scène is entirely fictional,  with invented characters, imagined situations, memory gaps completed with intuition, meaning there is no strict fidelity to concrete reality; we still recognize ourselves in those characters. It’s a mysterious and beautiful feeling. Sometimes I look at Lázaro and I see my father.

What about Jade Reyes?  Did he capture you at that age in the way you remember?

Santamaría: Jade is who I wish I had been at their age. From the moment I met them, I was struck by their freedom, intelligence, and sensitivity, and on top of that, they loves to dance, and does it beautifully. When I met their mother, father, and sister, I fully understood how much I loved the possibility of working with them. Having dinner at their house reminded me so much of evenings with my mother, my father, and my brother. In some way, I felt like I was visiting what my own home had been like when I was a child.

At the same time, the process of building the characters was always bidirectional. I wanted them to be nourished not only by my memory or imagination, but also by Jade’s,  the same with Lázaro, with Sofía, with Tere. We created a dynamic that I loved very much: we exchanged a notebook in which we would leave something we wanted to offer to the character, personal memories, dreams, stories, drawings, photographs, whatever came to mind. It helped us build the characters, but it also helped us get to know one another and bond. And within that process of getting to know each other, the characters of the film began to emerge.

The cast worked well together.

Santamaría: The entire team who made this film gave love, heart, and an enormous amount of time to make it possible. I’m deeply grateful to everyone. But I especially want to mention Sofía Espinosa and Teresa Sánchez, two people with whom I also shared a very deep and long process. Sofía and Tere were the first people confirmed for the roles of Diana and Tere. I began working with them while I was still writing the script.

Why did you shoot in 16mm?

Santamaría: For many reasons, but the most important for me was the mystique, the pressure, the tension, the magic that emerges when preparing the conditions for the camera to roll. We didn’t have infinite material. There was strict control over footage, over cans of film, for every shooting day. We couldn’t see the results immediately. We had the privilege of not having the immediacy of the image, and that gave us the freedom to focus our attention on situations, on things themselves, rather than on a screen — not on constantly watching and rewatching what we had done, but on truly paying attention to what we were doing in the moment we were doing it. And that is incredible.

We had to prepare, prepare very carefully, and then, once the camera rolled, simply feel and observe — and only later, sometimes weeks later, once the film was developed, could we finally see it. It was an enormous gift. The working dynamic that 16mm created nourished us with life and mystery throughout the shoot.