Magdalena Zyzak is a writer, producer, and director. She co-wrote and produced “Redland,” which was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. In 2016, she teamed up with Zachary Cotler to direct “Maya Dardel,” which premiered at SXSW in 2017. Zyzak is the author of the novel “The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel.”
“The Wall of Mexico” will premiere at the 2019 SXSW Film Festival on March 8. The film is co-directed by Cotler.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
MZ: “The Wall of Mexico” tells the story of a wealthy Mexican-American family who build a wall around their property to keep the poor white locals from stealing their artesian water. It’s an allegory that extends beyond current Mexican-American relations, mapping onto various human social hierarchies: political, socioeconomic, sexual, and so on.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
MZ: It’s an indirect reaction to the 2016 election and its incredibly messy aftermath. In our film, cliché power structures familiar to anyone exposed to American news and pop culture are reversed: A white handyman, uneducated and poor, tries to partake in the privileged and enticing world of a wealthy, educated Latino family.
I’m interested in taking topical issues from their immediate context and making them abstract. The film aims to transcend the political in order to reflect on myths of paradise and conceptual borders.
W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?
MZ: I want to provoke them into thought, amusement, and irreverence.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
MZ: The international nature of our production, though stimulating on most levels, presented a lot of challenges in terms of coordination. We shot the film in Tijuana, colored it in Los Angeles, mixed it in London, and did visual effects in Belgrade and Tijuana. Our music came from Russia, Colombia, France, and Puerto Rico.
NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because separate engineering teams used English and metric units of measurement and failed to tell each other. Fortunately, our mishaps were cheaper and more “down to earth.”
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.
MZ: The film was paid for by a few independent investors. The best kind of investor is one who can be persuaded that an arthouse film is a better gadget than the latest sports car.
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
MZ: I come from Poland, which has a serious cinematic tradition. I spent the summers of my youth attending film festivals. I don’t remember the specific moment I decided to become a filmmaker, but I’ve always had an implicit understanding that cinema is the most relevant art form of our era, combining political immediacy with visual and textual dimensions.
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
MZ: At film school, they taught us not to use zooms, but then I watched Michelangelo Antonioni’s films. I’ve yet to make a film with zooms, but I’m looking forward to it.
W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?
MZ: To be critical of whatever discourse might be in vogue at a given moment, and to look beyond cinema into other fields — such as literature, history, and fine arts — for inspiration. This advice is useful to men as well.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
MZ: I always cringe at naming my favorite works because it’s so limiting. Jane Campion’s “Sweetie” is a terrific film. It gives you a feeling of the suburban world about to be upturned, a promise of discombobulation. The compositions are fragmented, showing women lurking at the edges of frames, arms and legs separated from torsos. Omnipresent floral patterns explode out of the film’s rugs and wall papers in a transubstantiation of kitsch into art. The film is both wonderfully grotesque and poetic, two qualities that coexist rarely in film and often in life.
W&H: It’s been a little over a year since the reckoning in Hollywood and the global film industry began. What differences have you noticed since the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements launched?
MZ: These movements have helped reduce sexual predation in the film industry. However, their repercussions are not solely positive. During the casting process for “The Wall of Mexico,” I spoke to many young actresses and noticed a worrisome trend. Three of them — three separate women– half-apologetically, half-jokingly expressed a regret that they had never experienced sexual harassment.
In their own words, they felt “without a badge of status…left out of the conversation.” The moment victimhood becomes a celebrated virtue, women are in serious danger, not just physically, but also psychologically. I’d like to see more women publicly reject the politics of victimhood.
