INTERVIEW: ‘I’m Leaving Now’ offers different take on American dream
Photo: Felipe Hernández is featured in Lindsey Cordero and Armando Croda’s I’m Leaving Now. Photo courtesy of Cinema Guild / Provided by press site with permission.
Given the policies of President Donald Trump as it relates to the southern border of the United States, the issue of immigration has become one of the most divisive and controversial topics in the country. What often is missing from the debate, which is typically oversimplified and mischaracterized on primetime news channels, are the actual humans who cross the border — whether documented or undocumented — and set up lives in a completely different community.
The new documentary I’m Leaving Now puts a face on the issue of immigration, but in doing so, the movie also reinterprets the possibilities and limitations attached to the so-called American dream.
In the movie, which is directed by Lindsey Cordero and Armando Croda, Felipe has been living and working in Brooklyn, New York, for several years. He sends the money he earns from low-paying jobs back home to Mexico, and now he has made up his mind to cross the border again and return to his family.
The problem is that his family wants him to stay in the U.S. and keep earning money, and they might not fully comprehend the sacrifices he has made. Felipe’s struggles offer a different lens on the eternal question of whether a person can ever truly go home again.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Cordero and Croda about I’m Leaving Now, which is playing in movie theaters. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What first inspired you to tell the story of Felipe?
Being immigrants from Mexico ourselves we shared the feeling of home sickness. Of course our circumstances and realities are very different from Felipe’s, but the idea of leaving a whole life behind and having to reinvent yourself in a foreign country inspired us to tell Felipe’s story.
Was Felipe immediately open to the idea of having a film about his life?
We knew Felipe way before we started working with him on this documentary. We lived in the same neighborhood in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and would always see him with his mariachi hat picking up bottles and singing mariachi songs. Felipe would always see us running around with the cameras, and one day he asked us if we could do a short video of him so that his family back home could see what his life was like in Brooklyn, New York.
This was before FaceTime had become a popular communication tool among the immigrant community, and Felipe’s family had not seen his face since the last time they said goodbye to each other in Mexico.
We did a video of Felipe pulling his cart, singing and posted it on Facebook for his family to see. As we became closer to Felipe, and he shared more stories about his struggles, he told us about Cesarín, his teenage boy whom he left behind a few days after he was born. This had taken a huge toll on Felipe — he felt guilty about being an absent father figure, their relationship merely based on phone calls and boxes filled with sneakers and clothes that arrived every month from the USA.
I think Felipe saw us and the film as a vehicle with which he could express and show his youngest son, Cesarín, the sacrifices he was making to give him a better life so that one day he could earn the title of ‘father.’ Felipe thought of this film as a love letter to Cesarín, and on many occasions he would speak to him looking straight into the camera. We did not use these takes but found a way to represent that idea crafting a lyrical scene of Felipe walking towards the sea in Coney Island reading a love letter to his son. It’s the only scene that has a voice over, and it was inspired by Felipe’s take on the whole experience of making a documentary together.
You spent a relatively long time filming this documentary. Why did you need that much time, and when did you realize it was time to stop recording?
We like to spend time with our characters, get to know them on many levels, and it’s very important for us to establish long-lasting friendships with them. By spending time with people you make them feel comfortable being with you, and it becomes natural to share intimate stories.
We pay close attention to the details and routines of our characters, their relationships with the people that surround them and the spaces they inhabit in order to show their worlds. Knowing when it’s time to stop recording is a tough question because sometimes when you turn the cameras off and pack up is when the best moments happen. As documentary filmmakers sometimes you never want to stop filming for fear of losing the moment.
We were documenting the story about a man living in a liminal space, neither here nor there, desperately wanting to go back home but confronting many obstacles along the way, so we were patiently waiting for Felipe to make up his mind whether he was staying or going, thinking that whatever choice he made would be equally strong. We knew that would mark the end of the filming process.
Do you feel that the story in I’m Leaving Now changes audience members’ perceptions about immigration and Mexico? Was that immediately apparent when you began the project?
We believe that this story does change the audience’s perceptions on immigration, especially in Mexico, where almost everyone has a family member living in the United States. A lot of people can’t even imagine how hard immigrants living abroad work to provide their families a better life. Making the money that they send back home every 15 days through Western Union is not an easy task. There’s a lot of sacrifice, hardship, solitude and guilt that goes with every dollar sent back home.
In the Guanajuato Film Festival in Mexico, a young man after the screening told us that his father had left for the United States when he was very little and that he had always held it against him, but after watching this documentary he was able to understand why his father did it and was ready to forgive him.
In New York, we live surrounded by immigrants who are building our cities, cooking our food, cleaning our houses and taking care of our kids. We take for granted the fundamental work that they do and barely acknowledge their contributions to society and the economy because they have to live under the radar. Documentaries like I’m Leaving Now make us stop to take the time to really see who these people are that we bump into all the time without even noticing them.
How difficult was it to find financing for the film?
This project was a true labor of love and done on a shoestring budget. Fortunately we had camera and sound gear, so we just got out there and started filming. We got a grant from the Princes Grace Foundation with which we bought a couple of hard drives and put the rest of the money in a bank account and never touched it until three years later, when we were struggling to find finishing funds once [we] were accepted into our first festival at Hot Docs.
The documentary participated at DocsForum of DocsMX and won a free pass to participate in DocuLab.9 at the Guadalajara International Film Festival where we won the free color correction prize from Cinecolor. Also, once we had a festival premiere we were able to raise some additional, much needed finishing funds from a foundation.
We also always worked on other people’s documentary either editing, producing, doing camera or sound to pay the bills and then worked on our own documentary on the side and on the weekends. It was tough at times, but we believed in the film. And fortunately, we partnered with the writer and producer, Josh Alexander, who helped us craft and build the story throughout the edit as well as lead the charge on the producing side — which is always tough on films with budgets like this on.
Fundamentally, we had an incredible group of artisans lend their skills at little to no cost, including our co-producer, Xavier Velasco; our composers, Leonardo Heiblum and Jacobo Leiberman; our music supervisor, Jonathan Finegold; and our incredible sound designers and colorists in Mexico. It was really a group effort.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
I’m Leaving Now, directed Lindsey Cordero and Armando Croda, is now playing in movie theaters. Click here for more information.
