INTERVIEW: ‘Don’t You Let Me Go’ premieres at Tribeca Film Festival
Photo: Don’t You Let Me Go stars Chiara Hourcade, Victoria Jorge and Eva Dans. Photo courtesy of Soledad Rodriguez / Provided by Cinema Tropical with permission.
Writer-directors Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge, filmmakers based in Montevideo, Uruguay, had an eventful week at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. That annual cinematic smorgasbord played host to the world premiere of their new film, Don’t You Let Me Go, which follows the character of Adela, a woman who must confront the death of her beloved friend, Elena. During her grief, which very much feels detached from reality, Adela time travels a decade prior to Elena’s death. Now the friends are reunited at a beachside resort, along with another friend named Luci. Here, in the past, they have a chance to reconcile and deal with the inevitability of the present.
In many ways, Don’t You Let Me Go feels like a chapter from a magical realism book, with the reality of mourning existing alongside the magical whimsy of time travel. “We have worked together since our 20s,” Guevara said in a recent Zoom interview about her working relationship with Jorge. “It’s been a while now. We are 40-something, so we started writing in college, in university, some short films. We also kind of grew up going to the movies together. You know when attending college, we started to attend the cineplex here in Montevideo, so I feel we did grow up together in cinema, you know. We share sensibility about how we see people, how we like to talk about people. We did find similarities. We laugh at the same things. I don’t know, for us, it’s kind of natural. So working together it’s been kind of natural, too.”
Guevara admitted that sharing writing responsibilities for the script is quite common in the world of cinema, but sharing responsibilities as co-directors is more unique. To ensure the two creatives are on the same page, Guevara and Jorge would constantly discuss their decisions and plans. They conversed on the script. They conversed on the rehearsals. They conversed on the casting. Only after these lengthy conversations were they ready to start filming.
“Everything is pretty discussed,” Guevara said. “The movie is already done in our heads, so these kind of movies we make together are on those terms. … The rehearsals, which are intense for us with the actors, we try stuff with them. We discuss a lot with them and between us, so that’s how it works for us.”
When they started writing the script, the second part of Don’t You Let Me Go came first. They immersed themselves in Adela’s time travel to 10 years prior. At first, they thought that time-travel piece would be the entire film, but then they felt the need to expand the story and bring in more scenes from the present.
“We wanted to keep it there, and then we realized our main character, we wanted her to feel the way we were feeling looking back, the nostalgia,” she said. “We thought it was more powerful if we also spoke about the present, you know, that those characters are already grown ups, that time passed and not good things happened to them.”
Guevara added: “When someone is about to leave, time is divided. … What we wanted to share or express in this first part of the movie is that Adela is experiencing two different emotions. She’s very sad, but she’s resisting what is happening. So that’s why we gave her this [time-travel piece]. We decided that she could invoke this past time capsule.”
The movie stars Chiara Hourcade, Victoria Jorge and Eva Dans as the three friends who meet once again in the past. Guevara said these performers didn’t know one another that well, but by the end of the shoot, they were friends. “We didn’t look for many actresses,” she said. “And the rehearsals were pretty intense at times, and now they say they are friends. They became very close, and we became close with them also.”
Filming took place in Montevideo at an old hotel that is made to look like a funeral home in the first part of the movie. The second part of the film — the time-travel part — was filmed 80 kilometers outside Montevideo at a beachside resort.
“It’s a place we know very well,” Guevara said of the resort. “I spent all my childhood there. My grandpa had a house there, so it was written to be shot there. And we shot in two different months. We shot in March 2022 the second part of the movie, and then in November we shot the first part of the movie here in Montevideo. We split the shooting.”
While filming, Guevara was surprised to see some unexpected messages start to bubble to the surface. For example, in the first part of the narrative, Adela appears detached from the organized grief surrounding the loss of her friend. It’s almost as if Elena’s death hasn’t happened, or they are mourning someone different.
“That’s not a message we wanted to share, but it’s in the back of all that first part of the movie,” Guevara said. “Yes, how awkward it feels to be all together at the same time, experiencing the same pain in that moment. It’s impossible. It is so imposter. It’s so not organic at all, but it’s also necessary. Yes, traditions are there. It’s kind of absurd that you have to do that ritual, but also it needs to be done.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Don’t You Let Me Go recently, written and directed by Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge, recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. Click here for more information.
