Winner of the Vimeo Staff Pick Award at Guanajuato International Film Festival, “Agua” by Santiago Zermeño is the gripping and powerful story of a young man whose sexual desires are at odds with society’s expectations and notions of masculinity. After secretly sharing an intimate moment with another man, Camilo’s internalized fear and shame lead to an explosive encounter that alters his life.
Camilo’s journey unfolds in a way that authentically reflects the social context and pressures that Zermeño observes. From the locations and performances to the script and cinematography, each decision is carefully crafted to capture the tension between Camilo’s identity and his surroundings.
“For me, ‘Agua’ dwells on the contradictions that conform the core of traditional masculinity. It looks into the space of interaction between class and gender, the private and the public, the rural and the urban,” says Zermeño.
We reached out to Zermeño ahead of the release to hear more about how the film came together. Read on to hear more about his inspiring filmmaking process.
On the inspiration for the film
In the beginning, ‘Agua’ told the story of a young man from Xochimilco who migrated to the United States. It was a short film about departures and farewells. Through the alchemy of the writing process, the story evolved violently. Each new draft took me unconsciously closer to my own core.
I understood that Camilo wasn’t leaving because he wanted to go somewhere else, but because he needed to leave. The departure couldn’t be smooth. Camilo had to flee like a dog does: biting and barking; without knowing where to go.
Camilo is still a teenager and acts the way he has learned to act, the way he has learned men are supposed to act. The writing process for ‘Agua’ became a way in which I could question my own notions of masculinity, gender roles, and the silent violence we exert upon ourselves.
On working with lead actor, Daniel Bolaños
The casting for Camilo was particularly difficult. I was looking for authenticity in terms of the body, natural movement, and verbless presence. Finding a sensible and talented teenage actor whose body type was coherent with the character’s trade and social context was harder than expected. Luckily, Daniel crossed paths with us.
A huge amount of work still went into teaching him how to row the wooden ships. Moving those while acting is much harder than it appears. On top of that, we were shooting on 16mm film, so we had to be precise and cautious with the material. I understood we had to invest a lot of time in actually doing the job before Daniel could feel at ease with the row. We started rowing classes with a day laborer from a farm in Xochimilco a couple of months before filming. Those sessions served several purposes. Daniel would learn how to row whilst doing his character study, and I would also interview the man and use that information in the final stages of the writing process.
But the hardest and most interesting work came in the internal work we did together. Daniel had to imagine himself in a context where his gender performance and his sexual desires were in contradiction with each other. Fear, shame, and anger were big emotional currents fighting inside him.
On the writing process
I see the writing as a dialectic process between two main forces: the thematic exploration of the story, and the way those actions are going to be rendered into the cinematic language of film.
In ‘Agua,’ the first process was deeply personal. It had to do with issues I was dealing with at that moment. In a way, Camilo served as an avatar into which I unconsciously projected my own problems and frustrations. In this sense, my intuition was a well from which I kept getting ideas and making decisions. This process was painful, but ultimately rewarding.
The second process was much more joyful and liberating. Camilo and I are not the same person, and this was ultimately Camilo’s story. Rehearsing with the actors and the DP in the real locations became a great way to test the script’s authenticity and cinematic potential. After those rehearsals, I would rewrite the scenes and dialogues in order to keep whatever treasure we had found together. Most of the time, the real locations would also demand a certain dramatic treatment. I would try to adapt the stage directions, letting a natural scene arise from those specific spaces.
On the film’s powerful ending
For me, the soul of the film was always in its locations. I regard Xochimilco as an extraordinary place. It’s a space in which the traditional and the rural have been engulfed by the urban monster that is Mexico City. Many of the contradictions and problems that afflict our contemporary society arise there in some of its most explicit forms. Problems like homophobia and radical gender violence are still the norm there. Even when some progressive and privileged sectors of the urban Mexico City might feel the issues have long been overcome. But the city, usually a symbol of social progress, is actually an alien environment for Camilo. This will become his new home, but that will come at a cost.
In its core, the conflict dwells on our identity and the price we pay in order to be ourselves, sometimes against our own community’s way of living. In this sense, I wanted Camilo to remain true to himself. But I also knew that his possibilities were limited given his actual emotional tools and cultural and social support. I wanted to acknowledge the concrete social and material conditions that may limit our capacity for individual change in our search for plenitude.
I like to think that, eventually, Camilo will be okay. After all, he has his whole life ahead of him. However, at the moment the film stops, he probably is at his loneliest point in life.
On the challenges of making the film
I faced so many challenges, I don’t even know where to begin. Shooting on water, on 16mm film with an old camera, on a tight budget, and in particularly diverse and difficult locations meant that every scenario had to be thoroughly planned ahead. Ironically, one of the biggest challenges had to do with protecting the film from all the army-like planning and stress that came with such situations.
I believe that cinema is, first and foremost, time rendered into the moving image. When you shoot, you need to be able to feel the internal time that is coming to life within the frame, and that can be extremely hard if you are not in the proper mind set. That’s true for the director, but also for all the actors, the camera operator, focus puller, DP, boom operator…
On the themes of the film
I love cinema. I think it is sometimes a door, and sometimes it is a window. But I also feel that it is the spectator, not the filmmaker, who decides what it is and what it is not. All we can do as filmmakers is state our intentions.
We designed the image and camera work as a coherent extension of the conflict. The camera follows Camilo, but always from a couple of steps back, never knowing beforehand what he will do. We wanted an inexact camera, expectant to Camilo’s movements and therefore prone to creating a constant tension within the cinematic frame.
In order to successfully communicate his conflict, we had to show Camilo’s relationship with his environment. Thorough sound construction of the social space that surrounds him accomplished that. We designed with an expressive soundtrack in mind. It’s composed by diegetic musical elements blended with the natural and manmade sounds of Xochimilco.
Every decision was made thinking about Camilo and his freedom. He was always free to choose. We tried to remain unobtrusive, we tried not to limit him. We let him make mistakes and walked along with him all the way through, always trying to look at him closely but non-judgmentally.
The ending is meant as a rupture with the rest of the film. For the first time, we see Camilo from afar, amidst a visual context so much bigger than himself. The camera actively comments on his situation, a long shot that invites the viewer to reflect on his uncertain destiny. That reflection, however, remains their own to make.
