Independent Spirit Awards is this Sunday, February 25th at 4:00PM CST
Chronicle of a Wandering Saint is his debut feature film and it has gained a lot of attention this award season. It premiered at SXSW in 2023. The film won the AYH Award for visionary film. It's also been nominated for Independent Spirit Awards in 3 Categories: Best First Feature, Best First Screenplay and Best Cinematography.
Here is more on the visionary creator Tomas Gomez Bustillo:
IMDb Synopsis of Chronicle of a Wandering Saint:
In a tiny rural village in Argentina, Rita Lopez, a pious yet insatiably competitive woman, discovers that staging a miracle could be her ticket to sainthood.
1. List 3 adjective to describe Chronicle of a Wandering Saint?
Playful, unexpected, and magical.
2. What is the genesis of your film?
It was really an image. I think the first thing that popped into my mind, it was the image of a ghost that was made entirely of light, and that person felt both perfect, but also very lonely at the same time. So that was the first image that popped into my mind. That was really the beginning of the whole journey.
3. What was the hardest thing about making this film?
There's so many things I could talk about here. You know, making an independent film is very challenging. I think, honestly, the hardest thing is the road to getting the film made, and that means that you just have to deal with so much rejection. So much of like, perseverance and really not listening to that voice that tells you to give up because it's just not working out. The most challenging part of it is keeping your perseverance and your spirits up as you're going through very challenging moments of putting together the independent film in the first place. Because once the film is put together, then it's really more of a logistical problems. But this one was really more of like, Am I good enough to do this well? Is the story good enough to be made? And so those are tricky questions to have in your head for a long time.
4. Is the lead character Rita, inspired by anybody you know or a combination of people you know in real life?
Rita was inspired. So a lot of her character traits come from observation and people that I've met in the real world who live in a similar small town and go through similar things. But at the same time, I also worked really hard to make Rita very much like myself. So a lot of her flaws and a lot of the issues that she has and a lot of her pettiness, those are all things that come from me. I felt like I could that way I could really engage with the character and understand her on a different level.
5. Could you give a fun fact about your experience working with actress Monica Villa?
A fun fact about working with Monica. I think it's just you underestimate how tough she is, you know, because she is. Monica is very small, but you just don't realize how tough she is. It was a crew of a lot of young people, and she was probably the oldest person on the crew in terms of age. But she was the one who at like 6 a.m., after 14 hours of shooting, she was ready for the next take. Every single time, every time. Super fresh, ready to get into the pool. And at 5 a.m. in the morning, which was required for her and some shots and freezing cold and the rain and the sun, whatever it took, she was there for it. And that toughness is a quality of hers that I really admire.
6. How about your other cast members? Could you talk about any memorable moment with them, on or off camera?
Sure. Well, I can speak to one character in particular, which is the character who plays the actor who plays the role of Angel. He was particularly difficult to find somebody who could play that role in an interesting and kind of unexpected way. And so my casting directors actually were smart enough to look outside of the normal avenues for casting, and they looked up not just at actors, but anybody who was a performer. And so we found him. His name is Neil, and he is a, accordion player. So that was really cool that we found him and he was fantastic. And we fell in love with his talent. But nobody really knows that he was an accordion player, a very talented one at that. He brought a lot of that personality to the character.
7. Did you know how the film would end before you wrote it or did it come to you afterward?
That's a really great question. I would say I knew how I wanted the ending to feel. But I didn't know what the ending was going to be like. And I tried many, many different endings. I must have tried like 15 different endings for the film until I found this one, which felt right. So, I didn't know exactly how it was going to end, but I did know how I wanted it to feel.
8.Congrats on your film being nominated for 2024 Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature, Best First Screenplay and Best Cinematography, where were you when you heard that it was nominated?
I was at home. I was here with my wife, and we tuned in. We were jet lagged. We had just gotten back from a trip, and we were very jet lagged. And we also had fever. So, we tuned in to watch the announcement, and I thought I was hallucinating from the fever. I didn't think what I was seeing was real. So it was a really crazy, crazy moment for me. But I'm so grateful.
9. If you could have been a screenwriter or director of any movie you saw, with movie would that be?
Wow, that's such a hard question because I love so many films. I think if I could have been the director or screenwriter for this film from the 1960s, a French film by Jacques Tati, I think I would have loved to have directed that. It just looks like so much fun, so much fun.
10. What book or film had the most influence in your life?
Book: Man, these are great questions. Okay, I love books. I love way too many books to name. But I will say the book that influenced me the most for this movie, I would say, is 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia marquez. I read it when I was in college and introduced me to magical realism with a very Latin American perspective, and it just felt like it touched my culture. It touched my heart personally and it was something that I completely fell in love with. I've read it, like, five times, and I still I'm completely in love with it.
Film: I studied political science in college, and I was doing short films as a hobby. And then when I started realizing that it was becoming more than a hobby for my for me. And so at some point, I started just thinking about maybe I should pursue film as a career. So I gave myself one year to think about it. And that was the year that the Tree of Life came out by Terrence Malick. And I remember going to the movie theater to see it, and by the end, I was just crying and crying and crying because I felt like I knew in my heart that I needed to make films for the rest of my life, and that movie, I loved it. It blew me away. I didn't know movies could be like that. And it really confirmed that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
11. What is the one thing you can't live without?
I honestly think, yeah, friends and family, I would say, yeah.
12. Last question, from your bio on your website, you've been to Argentina, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. If anyone reading this interview wants to go to those places, where do you suggest they should go to?
Well, I'll say about Argentina because it's my home country and it's the place that I'm the proudest to be able to recommend.So, I would say if you go to Argentina, you have to go to Buenos Aires and the capital because it's an incredibly crazy city that's unlike any other. And it's very beautiful and it's also very chaotic. Um, and then I think that mix is what makes it so interesting. I would say there's another region in Argentina which some people might know, which is called Patagonia. It's like this incredibly tranquil mountain lake kind of landscape that I love very much.It connects you with nature, and it's almost like a spiritual place. So, I would say that those are my two favorite spots. And then wherever you go of those two, you're going to eat great. If you like barbecues and wine, you're gonna be just fine.