Rodrigo Reyes on Reflecting a Tragic Reality in “Sansón and Me”

The Moveable Fest, March 1, 2023: Rodrigo Reyes on Reflecting a Tragic Reality in “Sansón and Me”

“In his work to support himself as a boundary-pushing filmmaker, Rodrigo Reyes had seen plenty of court cases as a Spanish interpreter, but none had left such an impression on him as the one involving Sansón Noe Andrade, who at 19 seemed impossibly young to be locked away with no obvious path back into society after being convicted as an accomplice to murder, having been in the driver’s seat when his brother-in-law killed a member of a rival gang. Reyes knew there had to be more to the story than what he had heard from the evidence — not necessarily the crime which Andrade had taken responsibility for his part in, but how he ended up in such a position, trying to acclimate to a culture he hadn’t grown up around in California after he was born in the Mexican city of Tecomán and brought across the border to live with his aunt at the age of 12. Reyes didn’t think his professional lives would cross, but the producer Su Kim, who had worked with him on his previous film ‘499,’ as well as films such as ‘Midnight Traveler’ and ‘Hale County This Morning, This Evening,’ suggested he write to Andrade when he might be thinking of Reyes, one of the last people to help him on the outside as a translator, as well.

“It was the right instinct when Andrade and Reyes would strike up an ongoing dialogue as the former continues to serve out his sentence that becomes the basis for ‘Sansón and Me,’ an act of compassion as much as it is a compelling documentary when Reyes turns the impossibility of recording their conversations on camera when he was prevented by the penal system from doing so into a lifeline in a variety of ways for Andrade, who gets to share his side of the story and allows his family back in Tecomán to understand what’s become of him when communication with them is otherwise difficult. Over the better part of a decade, Reyes arranged for Andrade’s sister Debora and his nephew Tonito to be involved in recreations of the life he had before leaving for the States. While it’s the only way for Reyes to illustrate Andrade’s upbringing — though his way with words in letters he pens to the director are as vivid as any image could be — the recreated scenes allow for a connection between the family that might otherwise be thought lost forever, reexamining their own history living barely above the poverty line and touch on concerns that Tonito may be doomed to a fate similar to Sansón when the community seems trapped in a vicious cycle of wealth disparity in the region.

“Andrade is aware from the start that the film won’t change the direction of his life, but it will reflect it in a way that is bound to change perception of who he is and so many other immigrants like him who find their way to another country by circumstances well out of their control and struggle to acclimate and as Reyes finds himself relating to him in ways he might not have expected at first, ‘Sansón and Me’ resonates just as powerfully amongst anyone who comes into contact with it. After making its premiere at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, the film is arriving in theaters this week and Reyes spoke to the impact the film has already had on himself and Andrade, who has yet to see it, and how it wasn’t difficult to bring out the poetry that lives inside him.”

Additional reading:

The New York Times, March 2, 2023: ‘Sansón and Me’ Review: Retracing a Path to Prison

Cinema Tropical, May 22, 2020: Director Rodrigo Reyes on his Bold and Genre-Breaking Film 499: "We Embarked on an Experiment"

Good Docs, November 4, 2016: Director Rodrigo Reyes on Re-imagining the Challenges of the Immigrant Experience in Lupe Under the Sun