Diego Hernández
The blue sky over Tijuana. The sound of a metal door opening. The front of a warehouse slowly appears. Two young men take doors out of the building, one by one, and display them along the wall; a young woman walks by. Thus, the scene is set. Diego, Andrés and Renée are the three characters in Los Fundadores. They are students at the University of Baja California, working to pay their way through college. Diego is played by Diego Hernández, who is also directing his first film, as sharp as the wood of the doors that he cuts out ever so carefully. Beginning with his work as a carpenter assistant at the warehouse, and the local context of student debt, the director invents and composes a fiction around these three young people who waver and wonder about the possibility of genuine action, given the political apathy of their generation and the disconnection of their representatives. Because, “Here, it’s Tijuana, not Mexico City”, as a student on campus says. Bold director Diego Hernández has fun shifting the outer edges of the narrative frame. By using theatre rehearsals, in particular, he plants seeds of doubts between the characters of the film – the fictional doubles of the real Renée, Andrés and Diego – and those of the play they are setting up. We know almost nothing about the play, except its title: Los Fundadores. Yet of course, the real founders are the three young persons who are trying to build the frame of their action in the world, using doors, car parts, theatre and political talk. They are trying to build and create a future for themselves, while also building their own film set. As a true craftsman, Diego Hernández pulls it off skilfully. Now it remains to be seen onto what the next door will open.
(Louise Martin-Papasian)
