One of my favorite films from the previous year, Trauma, was an especially brutal and enjoyable exploitation offering from Chile that ended up making my top list of the year for 2018. Now, I talk to the director of the picture, Lucio A. Rojas, about his career, the Chilean genre scene and the film in general.
Lucio A. Rojas: Since I was a child I grew up with a love for movies. Especially those of terror and fantasy. When I was an adult, I wanted to study film just after high school, but in Chile, it is very difficult and you can not dedicate this activity. So I studied Political Science, I had a very nice store selling genre films in Santiago and then I studied film and I could dedicate myself to my dream as a child, to tell stories that I think should be told, no matter how hard and difficult they may seem.
LR: The horror has attracted me since childhood. But as I grew up to become an adult, there my creative interest moved a bit away from the monsters, demons and the paranormal and began to interest me the human horrors, the psychopaths and people who can go from normality to being despicable beings. That point where a normal person becomes a degenerate, pervert or monster, has always been of powerful interest to me.
LR: No, the Chilean horror cinema takes very little time. And the films that exist so far, have not had enough of their own identity, they do not have an imaginary Chilean or despite touching local issues and we are just beginning to leave the foreign referents, especially North Americans, to build and tell our own stories. Probably "Trauma" is the first Chilean horror film that takes charge of horrors and fears as a country.
LR: There has been everything up to now. The first, "Zombie Dawn" is a very amateur film without any preparation and that was improvised a lot. The second, "Perfidia" is a fantastic imaginary film which is very experimental, which I still like a lot, although I would have liked to have more resources because it was very ambitious. The third film, "Sender" is a survival-type that was more mainstream, which meant a lot of international press and important festivals, but I feel that it did not have much of an identity of its own. And we come to "Trauma" which is by far our most accomplished film and where we find a very ad hoc language to what we wanted to tell the viewer. A controversial, explicit, controversial story. Well, I think that cinema has the task of making the viewer uncomfortable and not always taking it through pleasant grounds.
LR: The direction. I love being on the set and all the tension, stress and creativity that occurs in that place.
LR: I like to work in different areas, especially in production. But my vision is something that I am interested in continuing to explore because I am attracted to very controversial topics, highly controversial characters that few directors and screenwriters take over the world. That's why I want to keep touching these issues for a while until I feel that darkness has already come out of my life.
Me: That brings us to your new film, "Trauma." What can you tell us about the film in general?
LR: "Trauma" is a relentless voice. It's not just a movie, it goes much further. He has anger, anger, violence and distills evil from the screen. It is a declaration of principles of a Latin American citizen for the world, to tell everyone how bad we have been and how bad we are, with fascist governments, with political sectors that have oppressed millions and continue to go unpunished and that has never existed. It's a real justiciar and in Chile or speak. "Trauma" is a very violent speech, against sexual violence, against the abuse that we live in this continent, against the indifference of people to the problems of others and it is a work that was written from anger, to make it a work creative. All this is "Trauma," a creation made with a lot of passion, but also with a lot of anger
LR: Everything we see in "Trauma" is constructed from real stories. In fact, the famous first scene of the film is no more than a recreation of what we lived in Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship, which was one of the most violent and sadistic regimes in the world. For that reason, it is much sadder and more violent to know that everything we see in this fiction happened in my country and regularly for 17 years. Tens of thousands were tortured in my country and several thousand are missing. Knowing that you live in a country like this, who is not completely interested in justifying, makes you have a lot of anger and anger. That was the main engine to make this movie.
Me: How did you come to be attached to the project? Was this something you always wanted to do or were you brought on board later on?
LR: It was very simple. After the premiere of "Path" on Netflix, a producer appeared interested in working with me. Rodrigo Fernández, who had some previous experience in film. And I presented him "Trauma" and from the beginning, he was very interested. And it was all very nice because it gave us total freedom to work, there were no censures, restrictions, or anything like that. He let us work with total autonomy despite how difficult it was to develop a project as "Trauma." But the whole team was passionate about the film and they gave their best to carry out a film that is talked about a lot internationally.
Me: What was the set like while shooting the film? How did the cast and crew react to the type of film being made?
LR: All the technical team, the actors, the post-production people ... All! They behaved with a lot of love and passion for the project. I have nothing more to give you infinite thanks for all that you delivered. Everyone understood that it was a difficult film, but it worked with such respect towards the real victims who have lived through these events, that there was very good energy from the pre-production to the post-production stage. And the shooting was one of the best I've been in my life.
LR: It was a very intense shoot, but very kind! With people full of passion and love for the cinema and who believed in the Project from the beginning. The anecdotes were simple things. For example, we recorded some scenes with the drone one day and it hit a tree! For a low budget project like "Trauma," something like that is very serious. But in the afternoon the producer bought another and it was possible to continue filming.
LR: Now I am working on two projects. I am part of "ILL," an anthology of international biological horror where I will be in charge of the 'Contagium' section, in a story starring Felipe Ríos and Ximena del Solar, who are part of the cast of "Trauma." Ximena is also a co-writer of this story.
And also developing "Fascinare," a feature film for the second semester where we move away from such violent and explicit themes as "Trauma,' but equally controversial addressing the issue of the world of pedophilia. These are the projects for the year 2019 that we hope will turn out very well.
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