Natalia Almada is recipient of the 2012 MacArthur Genius Award and of the 2009 Sundance Documentary Directing Award for her film “El General.” Almada’s 2011 film “El Velador” premiered at New Directors/New Films and screened at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. Her other credits include “All Water Has a Perfect Memory,” an experimental short film, and “Al Otro Lado,” her award-winning debut feature documentary about immigration, drug trafficking, and corrido music. “Everything Else” is Almada’s debut fiction feature.

“Everything Else” will premiere at the 2016 New York Film Festival on October 13.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

NA: I always need a north star when I’m editing — one word which guides every cut. We like to think of our films as complex, and they are, but I believe they also have an essence which is quite simple. If you can capture that essence in one word then you have a guide when you get lost. My north star for this film was loneliness.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

NA: It wasn’t exactly “story” that I was drawn to — which I think is something which you can see in the film. The “story” is almost inconsequential. I was motivated by three different impulses — one formal, one political/theoretical, and one autobiographical.

Formally I was reacting to my previous film, “El Velador,” or “The Night Watchman,” which I felt existed just to one side of the border between fiction and documentary. I was curious if I could make a film that was just on the other side of that border.

Politically or theoretically I wanted to make a film about violence. I was inspired by Hannah Arendt’s idea that bureaucracy is one of the worst forms of violence because it dehumanizes the individual by making her a cog in the machine. I wanted to create an intimate portrait of a woman who has been made invisible by the bureaucracy in which she has worked her whole life. We rarely think of invisibility as a form of violence because it is not sensational, and yet I think it is a precursor to other forms of violence because the invisible individual has no rights by definition.

[As for the autobiographical impulse,] I drew from my own family’s biography to create the character’s background.

W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?

NA: I want the audience to keep thinking about the film. I hope that it will linger in their minds the way a mirage keeps lingering on the horizon as you drive towards it. I feel less of a need to control what thoughts they have about the film.

Of course there are ideas about violence and bureaucracy, and feelings about loneliness and isolation which I hope the film conveys, but what excites me most about presenting a film to an audience is that it becomes theirs.

Part of the incentive to create a film that has such an open narrative is that it allows a space for the viewer to insert herself into the film. In this way I hope that the film is a kind of vessel for other people’s emotions and memories.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

NA: The biggest challenge was making a film that is not rooted in “story.” I think the concept of “story” is a driving trend these days and while I think amazing films are made from this desire to “tell a story” it isn’t what this film is about for me.

I was interested in creating a portrait of person in a given moment within a certain social circumstance. This lack of story posed a challenge throughout the process, especially in the writing and fundraising phase. I felt constantly pushed to tell a story and the more I hinted at a traditional narrative the more story became necessary.

I really had to resist that feedback — which was difficult, especially when tied to funding — and I needed to figure out what elements were creating the structure that story would usually create. In other words, if I was going to forgo a cause and effect, plot-driven narrative, what would drive the narrative? The issue arose again in editing the film and we really had to work to find the rhythm and pacing that would drive the film forward.

This was a similar situation with “El Velador,” although in documentary I found that the frustrating expectation which was being [placed on me] was about documentary’s “obligation” to deliver information.

In both cases the solution was to lay the terms of the film in the first few minutes so that a viewer might let go of those expectations and accept the terms I was proposing.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

NA: My initial idea was to raise all the money through Mexico’s government grant, Eficine. This is a tax incentive for companies to give money to film productions. There is no financial loss for the companies because they essentially give their tax money to the production.

The way it works is that the production company finds non-film related companies to promise their financial support to the film production. Then the production company and the contributing companies submit an application to the Mexican film commission and Mexico’s IRS equivalent. I did not expect that it would be so difficult to secure the support from the companies — we tried but failed to even apply three or four times, so for over two years.

Then Adriana Barraza, the film’s star, informed me that she only had a narrow window of time available because she was going to begin a long TV series. When I was presented with the risk of losing her I decided to use what I had received of the MacArthur grant to fund the production of the film.

Financially this felt risky because I had thought that I should invest the MacArthur money in some way that would provide long-term security and insure my ability to keep making films. But I also knew that waiting around for someone else to believe in me and fund my film could be years of waiting during which my career would be stagnant for all practical purposes. So, there was a financial loss in waiting too.

We ended up shooting the film with MacArthur funds, a few small private investments, and incredible support from Simplemente, a Mexican company that gave us the camera and other equipment and support in kind.

Once the film was shot, it was much easier to convince three companies to support us for the Eficine application and we were able to raise the remaining funds needed. The application required a total of 482 PDF documents!

I realize that I never could have made a film like mine solely on investment financing as is often the case for fiction films in the U.S. My goal with the film has never been commercial success, which makes it a very poor candidate for an investor who may be willing to make a risky investment but still hopes for a return.

This is where I find there is a great difference between working in documentary and fiction. For me, the freedom in working outside of the commercial marketplace is essential to my creativity and the integrity of what I do.

W&H: What does it mean for you to have your film play at NYFF?

NA: It is a huge honor, of course. My previous film, “El Velador,” was in New Directors/New Films and then it went to the Cannes’ Directors Fortnight. While it was amazing to be at Cannes, the screenings at Lincoln Center were much more rewarding because they were solely about the film.

I think the audience that attends Lincoln Center is an ideal audience for introducing the film to the world because it tends to be a cinephile public with a diverse exposure to film. They are not only expecting to be entertained but are willing to be patient, confused, and surprised. In other words, it is a very open and receptive audience while still being a critical audience.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

NA: Best advice: to gamble on myself.

Worst advice: that I couldn’t do it.

W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?

NA: I hate to give “negative” advice, but I think the thing to be most weary of is other people telling you how to make your film.

The imagination is a mysterious thing, and during the process of making a film, the film only really exists in the imagination. We try to create things which will help articulate the inarticulable — a script, a storyboard, a budget — but ultimately those things all fall short of the whole. Until the film is complete, it only exists in the imagination, and even so perhaps only as a ghost.

When you allow others to asses your materials and tell you how to make your film, it is like they’ve hijacked your imagination. I’m not proposing that we work in isolation, but I think the imagination has to be protected as something rather sacred and mysterious, and one should guard the gates of it very closely.

As women — and minorities or any underprivileged, underrepresented people — I think we are more at risk of having our imaginations hijacked. First, we face the challenge of finding the sense of entitlement to even embark on the journey — to realize what is in our imagination. Then we face a tsunami of obstacles by a society which tends to undermine us causing us to doubt ourselves. There is a kind of equivalent to mansplaining of the imagination and creative process. The goal I think is to survive all of this with grace and integrity, and without bitterness and resentment.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

NA: I’ve never had “favorite” films, but have had films that inspired me or were useful to me in some way. So, rather than talk about a “favorite” I’d like to talk about my mentor Lourdes Portillo, without whom I don’t believe I could have made the films I’ve made. When I think of the challenges I’ve faced as a Latina director, both in the U.S. and in Mexico, I can only imagine what I would have faced thirty or forty years ago as she did.

I met Lourdes at Sundance in 2002. She was screening “Señorita Extraviada,” or “Missing Young Women,” about the feminicides in Juarez and I was screening my first short film, “All Water Has a Perfect Memory.” I had studied Lourde’s film “The Devil Never Sleeps” in grad school, and it was the only example I had of a film by a Latina about memory.

“The Devil Never Sleeps” is a very strange film that I think defies definitions. Formally it is incredibly rich and eclectic. Lourdes invents all kinds of aesthetic devices for telling her story. This resonated for me because I saw it as a response to the impossibility of speaking from within the mainstream language. Her formal devices came out of a need to create a language of her own because she was an outsider. I truly believe that the boldness of her films set the stage for my work and I hope that mine will do the same for someone else.

One of the most beautiful and telling things Lourdes ever told me was when I thanked her for a recommendation letter she wrote on my behalf, she briefly replied, “ahora te toca apoyar a la que sigue” — “Now it is your turn to support the the next woman.” This sense of lineage I believe is the only way that we will truly overcome the obstacles we face as women directors. It is what can give us courage and entitlement to fight for equality and to create films that do not compromise our vision.

W&H: Have you seen opportunities for women filmmakers increase over the last year due to the increased attention paid to the issue? If someone asked you what you thought needed to be done to get women more opportunities to direct, what would be your answer?

NA: There is an aspect of this issue which is industry based and should be addressed by fighting for equal pay, equal representation, and equal opportunity.

There is another aspect of this issue which is deeper and more societal which needs to be addressed if we are to create any real change. I, for one, am tired of being given a list of women directors as an example of how there is progress and equality. Yes, this is progress to some degree, but the issue is not simply that an equal number of films be made by women as men, but that women be able to express themselves in their work — that the world become tolerant and respectful of women’s perspectives.

I believe we still live in a world that is dominated by male worldviews: those are the endorsed and valued perspectives. To change this, I think we have to find empowerment from each other so that we can fight all those forces that try to hijack our imaginations.