Madres Screenwriters Miscione and Marcella Ochoa Interview

Automatically transcribed; may contain errors.

hi my name is allison rose and i'm with FlickDirect hello to both of you how are you hi hi allison nice to meet you nice to meet you too so tell me how you became aware of this situation that was going on and decided to write about it you so so basically i'm mexican-american and i always am looking for stories especially in a horror genre setting because i love horror and i never get to see my community and any of these types of films that i love and i'm always looking to see what is a horror film that i can write about my community and also bring awareness and also educate people because we we just you know we're always portrayed so stereotypically like what can i show and educate an audience so i've been looking for something and then i kind of came across a story of what was happening and it was important to me because my grandparents were migrant farm workers and so it's a story you know a community we never get to see them as lead characters in the film so when i i was doing sort of research and and reading some books and documentaries of what was happening to migrant communities in california in the 70s and i came across you won't give it away but like kind of this this horrible um horror that was happening and i felt i i this is a horror of what was happening and to kind of bring awareness the story needs to be told and i immediately was like well you know it's a horror story what can we do to make it feel like a horror story but then have that twist ending of what's really going on in the horror that's happening in this community and and mario's one of my closest friends and we had written another horror film together and we've been looking on another story or project to work on so i told him like hey look at this you know horror that i found what has been happening and that a lot of people aren't aware of i didn't know what was happening and you know what do you think of this idea like this setting for a horror film and and then i brought him in on it uh yeah for me you know i had uh previously done a feature that was uh more of a thriller but it was very sort of steeped in social issues like it was very much about the way people and communities look at each other and uh sort of deal with each other and value each other and so i've always responded those kind of stories and i try you know in the projects that i select and the projects that i develop to to kind of have a social angle and to to find ways to highlight things that that you know don't often get highlighted in film and when marcella campaign was talking about you know the setting for the story and and you know the issues that it would delve into it was super interesting to me because it's very much the type of story that i want to be a part of it you know genre is a really great way to enhance social commentary and and history in a way that's palatable to mainstream audiences and so you can have a horror film that's a ghost story you can also have sort of this background and this sort of thing that also like kind of punches the audience and says this is a real thing this is something to be aware of and so you know anytime i have the opportunity to be a part of a project like that i'm you know all in well i understand that you both love love horror but why not a documentary why not a straight drama why she i mean i i get it in a sense but i want to hear from you why you felt it was right for her oh yeah yes no that that's okay that's a great question so i had watched a documentary on the subject and because i had been doing research of books and then i was like what else other content is out there and then i watched a documentary that was incredibly powerful and my first you're right my first instinct was like oh you know this is a drama this is really interesting should we talk about you know these women and follow them and then i thought no you know what um what's happening is a horror and i love horror and i write a lot of horror and i was like you know what if told through a horror lens like what mario was saying it can get to a bigger audience and i love also telling social justice stories through a horror lens and like mario and i talked about that we're like had we just done a film with such a heavy subject through the whole film of what was happening i don't know if it could reach as big of an audience or could be as well received versus if you do it through a horror lens and it is a horror what's happening you have this twist at the end you can reach a broader audience audiences that wouldn't normally watch this kind of film and be educated and spark conversations like this and i think you know like for me what was happening um to my community was a horror like for me personally yeah we um so we so in in developing this kind of the the core of the story we always had you know diana as sort of this character the pregnant mexican-american woman kind of navigating this world and we always had the ending you know the the true horror that was happening and the way she gets from a to b changed a few times sometimes it was more of a psychological thriller sometimes it was a little bit more like a gaslighting thriller and we kept coming back to this idea of doing telling this in the supernatural way one because we love that but also you know we talked a lot about how if we did a a drama about sterilization it was it one it does you know as marcelo mentioned we felt it it turns off a huge chunk of of audience like if there are there are plenty of people who they see um this movie's about sterilization and i'm kind of spoiling it so we can kind of use yeah uh you can you can edit around me if if if you see a movie that's about this um they're not gonna watch it and this felt like a way to sort of to reach a broader audience and also it felt a way to sort of allow the audience to kind of enjoy the experience a little bit more because a 90-minute movie featuring the subject is like emotionally exhausting it's dramatic you know but but we but we have an opportunity to have a ghost story that's fun with characters that you like and that you know um play well off of each other but still bring us to this this ending that is actually impactful and that actually kind of opens the eyes of people watching it and so like you know the genre as a vehicle like i mentioned earlier it it just felt like the right way to tell the story and we're both we're both writers we're both storytellers either about this we we sort of felt like that was well tread territory but we had never seen this in a a film and so they know for audiences and that's a fictionalized narrative and so that was sort of what was really exciting was that we had just not seen a story about this told them this way before i completely agree with you i was very surprised and it caught my attention uh so you did a great job with that talk to me a little bit about with the cast like did you see these individuals playing these particular parts or did you have something else in your mind when you were writing it so for me it was just important to have um mexican characters and mexican-american characters just to be authentic and that was just the only thing you know when casting came out we talked to our director and we just thought and he was completely on board he's like yes you know mexican-american of descent for diana and new mexican um for the bethel character so that was just important for me because my community doesn't get to be represented like you were saying in many films and i thought this is such an authentic story of what i what we were writing for the mexican community i just felt i i hope we can cast them authentically and we were able to so i didn't have any actors in mind but i was so happy who they cast was absolutely blown away or you know to be honest um when they are cast they're cast as villains and in this case they most definitely are not villains so i i like that putting them in a brighter light mario you were gonna say no this it was authenticity was a big was was really important to us and um you know so while we weren't involved in casting you know plum house and amazon were very kind of aware of our feelings on the subject not just but also in setting making sure like you know there were some you know we talked you know in development like should this movie be set in the 70s should it be set at a different time and it was important to us in the 70s one because that's you know accurate you know it was happening in the 70s and also because we just felt like that was so unique about the setting like that it was sort of you know nearish past and we hadn't seen a horror movie set in this time period with this community you know and these people and and so you know they were we were very lucky that they were very you know on board with all of our thoughts on that i'm just i'm just being as authentic as possible that's fantastic so thank you guys so much i i really enjoyed the film and like i said the twist at the end you don't see coming and it really is shocking so thank you both so much i can't wait for everybody else to see it and i can't wait for hopefully it'll start a dialogue that's our hope that's our hope so thank you it's so nice meeting allison thank you nice to meet you too nice to meet you