And you, did you already tell your parents that you are gay?
Mexico City.- ‘Things we don’t do’, the new documentary film by Bruno Santamaría, was a healing ointment for both its creator and its protagonist.
The feature film, selected for the HotDocs festival, one of the most important of the genre in the world, addresses the story of Arturo, a teenager from a fishing village in Nayarit, who secretly dresses as a woman.
The four-year coexistence with the boy nicknamed «Ñoño» and the talks about his dreams and ambitions made Santamaría (Margarita, 2016) reflect on the way he faced his own homosexuality.
«What I like the most about documentary cinema is that it allows you, if you want to do it, to know the other in depth. And for that the other has to know you too. As you touch and let yourself be touched, it is the correspondence, «says the director in an interview.
The heart of the film, full of tension and drama, is the moment when Arturo decides to confront his parents, raised in a closed and macho community, to confess what he longs for.
«This secret that he had with his family I was living it, in another way, with my parents. That brought us very close. I left my house to be with other people and talk about things that I was not daring.
«In the interviews that I did in the town there was Arturo’s mother, who confronted me: ‘Why didn’t you tell your parents that you are homosexual?’ I answered him why I didn’t dare. ‘The worst thing you can do is keep a secret from your mother,’ she said. «
That his film is shown on HotDocs, in an online edition due to the coronavirus pandemic, fills Santamaría with pride.
«This year 3,500 films came to them, of which they selected 200. It is a catapult space in the documentary world. In the genre, there are two important ones, IDFA, in the Netherlands, and HotDocs».
