Christopher Zalla's New Film, “Radical,” at the 31st Annual Hamptons International Film Festival
Director Christopher Zalla dishes details on what led to him to make his new Mexican comedy-drama that won the Festival Favorite award at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
The story behind Radical began when an old film school friend of director Christopher Zalla’s came to him with the idea of adapting a 2013 WIRED article for the screen. The piece, titled “A Radical Way of Unleashing a Generation of Geniuses,” follows students in the Mexican city of Matamoros, “a dusty, sunbaked city of 489,000 that is a flash point in the war on drugs.”
Radical is not Zalla’s first run-in with Mexican actors; he worked with a handful on his 2007 directorial debut Padre Nuestro (also known as Our Father or Blood of My Blood) which won Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize for a dramatic feature. Since then, his connections have grown, with his new film seeing Eugenio Derbez as the star, who Zalla calls “the biggest movie star in the history of Latin America.”
Zalla’s aforementioned colleague, producer Ben Odell, worked with Zalla on Padre Nuestro and, along with Derbez who serves as co-producer on Radical, approached the Columbia University alum intending to have him direct the film. Zalla was instantly moved after reading the story but the team couldn’t find a professional screenwriter who was willing to risk their life to go to Matamoros for research. That’s where Zalla came in — he overtook not only being behind the camera but the keyboard as well.
Zalla explained that his “north star” during the filming process was to make a movie that was true to the real-life subjects’ lives and inspired people to consider that even in such a dangerous, poor area as Matamoros, the options shown on screen are viable.
Paloma Noyola Bueno, who was featured in the WIRED story and whose teacher, Sergio Juarez, is played by Derbez in the film, was one of Zalla’s consultants during the filming process.
The director, who made his return to Sundance earlier this year, in which the Spanish-language Radical won the Festival Favorite award, attended the Hamptons International Film Festival on October 7.
What benefits did film school offer you?
Christopher Zalla: “When I was in college, I asked a question to Jim Burroughs, who is the most successful television director ever to live. He said, ‘Is this what you want to do with the rest of your life? Then why wouldn’t you learn as much about it as you possibly can? What’s the rush?’ And I took that advice and went to film school. I had worked on sets before I went to film school and had been the assistant to a producer named Cary Woods, who was Miramax’s number-one gun in the ‘90s.”
How have the industry connections you made early on impacted your career as it stands today?
CZ: “I was a student of film, I watched a ton of films, but it wasn’t until film school that I learned how to make a movie. The other thing you get at film school is a community of friends and collaborators. I hired Ben Odell, my classmate at Columbia University, to produce my first movie, and he just hired me to make this movie, so none of that would’ve happened without film school.”
What was unique about the production of Radical?
CZ: “At the start of the process, after I got hired to write it, the pandemic dropped. I was stuck in Guatemala where I had been living for the last eight years, and they had a full shutdown. So I had to do a lot of research virtually — online interviews, using Google Maps, that kind of thing — but I had the benefit of the original WIRED Magazine story that the movie is based on and the research done by Josh Davis, who’s also a producer on the movie, so I had access to a lot. But the big thing was that I had the real people in the story to consult with and it was really wonderful to have them on set when we shot, sitting next to us while we were making a movie about their life. It’s not the type of thing you get to do very often. It was terrifying, but very gratifying at the same time.”
Dealing with the pressure of handling a true story, what was the most satisfying moment for you once the film was completed?
CZ: “Paloma [Noyola Bueno] watched an unfinished version of the film before Sundance and called me, balling, crying, saying, ‘You got it, you got it.’ That was it for me.”
Based on a true story, Radical releases in theaters on November 3.
10/31/23