Pedro González Rubio Director of ’To the Sea’

Pedro González Rubio, the director, cinematographer and editor of the beautiful slice of life To the Sea (Alamar) has created, with the lowest budget and a minimal crew, a cinematic ode to living the simple life. Set in the Mexican Caribbean region, the film is a portrait of a father-son relationship in an astonishing environment, where the lifestyle revolves around fishing. The director’s style was influenced by his grandfather Servando González, who traveled all around the world with his film Yanko (1961).

Are you as centered and blessed by peace as in your film?

(Starts laughing) Well, I have had times like the one in the film, but for very short films actually I get distracted very easily, and there is stress and many deadlines in our daily lives.

Actually your film was just about being there, without any of these deadlines and stress you talk about.

Yes. Jorge, the father, he lives in the Caribbean; I lived there for 7 years, in Playa del Carmen. I moved there right after I finished film school and did my first documentary, Toro Negro, in 2005. To earn my living I was making ecologically-oriented small documentaries for companies.

For this film I worked with a crew of two, and basically as if I was writing a novel. You know, I have this love and hate relationship with the camera because it’s a tool, but you can feel its aggressiveness. So I tried to get rid of [this] aggressiveness in order to approach my characters.

But how did actually you achieve this?

I did it by living in the same place; I got very close to my subject, it wasn’t like shooting and then leaving the next day. We were all living together in the same place for a month, eating the same food - there was no hierarchy in this shooting, it was like a communist film in a way (smiles). I was actually more of a guide for them; I would tell them to focus on one activity for each day of shooting, on one of the activities I see the fishermen actually doing in their daily lives.

So you did set up a script?

More of a treatment, I would say. At the beginning I started writing by putting conflicts that would happen and have to be resolved, but all these conflicts felt fake as they didn’t belong to this film.

So some very well-established filmmakers, people I respect, when they see my film they tell me it is very nice but lacks conflict. But I felt there was no need to add a conflict. The conflict was already there from the beginning of the film, given that the father and son have to separate.

It made me think about happiness. There is a Bob Marley song that goes “please, take the veil away from my eyes and let me regain the happiness that I once had when I was a kid”. It’s as if doing this film is trying to go back to that lost feeling of happiness, to regain it. At the same time, having this story of the separation was a reflection that for me as an adult I cannot get a hold of that moment, so that’s why what the kid is experiencing lasts just for a moment. In the ending scene when the kid is playing with bubbles with his mother back in Italy, I suggested him to do so in order to close the film with a metaphor of what the film is about.

How did you get so much out of that kid?

He was amazing. I filmed in his school for a week prior to our trip to Chinchorro, where the film takes place, so that he would get used to the camera. On the first day when I did camera tests with him he was waiting for me and was so excited that he dressed as Spiderman. He was like, well, we are going to make a film, right? That was so cute!

The three basic rules I told him where: 1, don’t look at the camera; 2 when I talk to you don’t respond with words, but focus on the actions; 3 do whatever you feel like. There was a good connection… a lot of empathy between the kid and myself.

You know, I urge you to show this film in the Arab world

Yes, it would be very good and also you know, to show it in Mexico, because we have such a violent situation in Mexico now, that this film I hope could be like a nice breath of air in the country.

By Laila Hotait Salas