Cannibal

Director's Statement

Whenever I begin a new project, I ask myself why I want to work on it. If the answer that I find is too rational and convenient, something that immediately responds to a desire where the fantasy is success, I know that I don’t actually want to make that movie. And yet, when I can’t quite find the right words, when I’m bested by the need to speak about something that I don’t know for sure what it is, I discover the value of that story. Because there is something irrational in film that drives me. I make movies because I like to learn, because I like to feel like a student who doesn’t know anything and who keeps his sense of wonder intact.
This film wants to tell me something beyond what I could ever know. And that pushes me in a powerful way. Alejandro, my co-screenwriter, told me about this novel, “Caribal” by Humberto Arenal. And we felt that we should write this screenplay together, trying to figure out the deep meaning hidden there in order to then turn it into a secret that the spectator can guess at. For us, the essence of film is mystery and the conviction that the viewer can actively participate in it. We construct a story and then we hide it so that it comes out from inside its soul, through the grating.
The fact that cannibalism is a huge taboo makes me think that there is something in its nature that is so close to us that we have decided to ban it. I believe that a ban always hides something and that we should ask ourselves about it, even if it is to reach the conclusion that bans should exist. Jean Genet wrote, “The kiss is the form taken by a primitive urge to bite, even to devour...” I wonder what he meant, what the act of devouring has to do with an act like a kiss.
I wonder what destruction has to do with tenderness. And I realize that this film is about the dialectic between evil and love.
This story takes place on the margins and at an emotional breaking point. I think it is the best way to talk about our times and to question our society. Westerns and film noir teach us that the best and most accurate portrayal of our civilization is to be found on geographic and moral frontiers where we find those characters who are pushed away and excluded, those who shape the true sense of an era and its ethical dilemma.