INTERVIEW: ‘Tigers Are Not Afraid,’ but you will be watching Issa López’s film
Photo: Tigers Are Not Afraid is a modern-day horror movie that offers commentary on current issues of violence in Mexico. Photo courtesy of KWPR / Provided with permission.
Tigers Are Not Afraid, the new movie from director Issa López, won acclaim during its initial release, and the genre mashup is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.
Although the horror film includes many supernatural elements, the genre conventions are actually set against the backdrop of the violent drug cartels in Mexico. This blending of the real with the surreal has entranced audience members and won over critics, including horror maestros Guillermo del Toro and Stephen King, both of whom have championed López’s film.
The movie begins with three orphaned children being given a dream come true: three wishes of anything they would like, according to press notes. This Aladdin-esque premise would seem to set the trio up for lots of money or lots of chocolate or lots of world peace, but the local cartel that murdered their parents and the ghosts of their past catch up to them and disrupt the magic of the moment.
For López, Tigers Are Not Afraid has been in the works for several years and represents a cinematic project that she has finally seen from beginning to end.
“I have been developing movies for a number of years, and those movies, as often happens, they didn’t get the green light,” the director said in a recent phone interview. “And then I looked back, and I realized seven years had gone by since the last time I had been on a set. And it was soul-crushing. I really, really live and breathe for the moment I’m on a set, so I needed to create a story that … was for me. It was a great opportunity to then tackle the things that really matter to me, like what was going on and still going on in my home country in Mexico and the gang-related violence, and at the same time, go into genre and the supernatural and horror, which I adore.”
López said she has been obsessed by horror films her entire life, but she never had the chance to create one of her own. So that’s exactly what she set out to do. She made a promise to herself to wake up one hour earlier every single day, which would afford her at least 60 minutes each day to work on the script — crafting a story that was not meant for the studios or financial backers, but was meant to creatively satisfy her own interests and talents.
“So I just sat down and made the time,” she said. “[Since those early days] it’s essentially the same story, same characters, same names, same setting, and then there’s a lot of elements that [went] into the script along the way. For example, there is no tiger in the first draft, and, of course, the movie was not called Tigers Are Not Afraid. The ending was way darker. I felt that the situation, it is very, very desperate, so naturally a first approach, which was more intellectual than emotional, ended up in a very dark place. And as I became closer and closer and more involved with the movie, I felt that it needed light at the end. If I was going to inhabit this universe for at least two years, I needed a little light. I think the audiences would need a little light to understand that really bad things are happening, but there is something that can be done.”
Eventually López settled on the image of a tiger, and this became her central focus for the rest of the project. The mystery, fear and potentiality for violence in this animal seemed to fit the themes of the movie.
Also aiding the filmmaker in her journey was her total immersion in news about Mexico’s violence. During the making of the movie she did not turn away from the difficult-to-read headlines and constant broadcast news stories about the communities and families ravaged by the cartels.
“As a Mexican, it’s almost impossible,” she said. “Now I’m doing it — distancing myself from it. It gets to a point that really, really destroys your soul, but back then, as I was still exploring, I couldn’t keep myself away from the news. … One of [my] movies that fell apart was about the origin of the cartels during World War II, and that required a hell of a lot of research. But in order to find out about how the cartels were born, you learn a lot about how the cartels work, and that was all the information I needed for the first draft. Eventually I had to speak with people who have worked with the children and with the children themselves, and it was an eye-opening, tremendous experience, of course.”
Tigers Are Not Afraid opened already in Mexico, and López reported that the audiences fell in love with the film. She said the movie struck a chord with the sentiments of the crowd, her fellow Mexicans who live through the difficult headlines as well.
“I am Mexican myself,” López said. “We have a sense of humor about tragedy and the horrors that we’re facing. All of that is deeply Mexican, and it was appreciated in Mexico, of course, I’m very happy to say.”
Once the script was complete, López needed to face the challenges of bringing her vision to life with a cast of young actors. She was used to directing adults, but working authentically with a group of young people is a difficult proposition.
“I was daunted by the prospect of directing practically an all-children cast because the tools that I have as a director of actors were useless,” she said. “It’s a completely different experiment, and I had to learn alongside with them how to reach the very dark places the movie goes into and then with them learn how to bring them out when I say cut, to not have them living in this hell for six week. So I think the five of them and me we all grew a lot during that process. It was beautiful, beyond just the movie. They became lovely, dear friends of mine.”
The finished product quickly won the praise of Toro, King and even Neil Gaiman, and this support has shocked, impressed and humbled López.
“It’s one of the best things that ever happened in my life,” the director said. “Guillermo … made a genre movie, a supernatural movie in the ’90s in Mexico when nobody was doing that stuff, and the entire world listened. And then he transplanted his career to the U.S. and ruled the genre world with incredibly unique stories that dealt with horror, so the real life mixed with the magical and the supernatural. So, of course, he’s god to me, and the fact that when he saw the movie he responded the way he did and reached out and said, ‘Let’s do something together,’ some days I can’t believe it. But it’s happening, it’s lovely. And then Stephen King, who wrote so many of the books that made me, that obsessed me and that taught me how to tell stories with real characters, and finally Neil Gaiman, who is the absolute god of comic books and then a bunch of incredible books and an incredible short story writer, all of them have been just unbelievable.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Tigers Are Not Afraid, written and directed by Issa López, is now available on DVD and Blu-ray. Click here for more information.
