Mauricio Calderon Rico is a Mexican filmmaker who, after several successful short films, presents his first film, All your fires, a film that addresses themes of identity, belonging and the internal struggle of the characters against their emotions. In interview, recommends queer books to celebrate the Diverse Pride March in Mexico City.
Mauricio Calderón Rico: interview and recommended books
The fire of adolescence
The story of all fires follows its three young protagonists as they navigate personal conflicts, complex family ties, new desires in the soul and the passion for fireboth literally and metaphorically speaking.
Calderón Rico’s ability to direct his cast and his eye for visual details has been instrumental in create a cinematic experience that addresses the exploration of life as a teenagerwith its disappointments, its silences, the identification with equals and the first loves.
“We are a collective of audiovisual creators who have been together for more than ten years to make all kinds of audiovisual content and now we are focusing on feature films. All the firess is the film that we are releasing in theaters. It is a coming-of-age story that revolves around Bruno, a pyromaniac teenager who one day runs away from home because many events overwhelm him, and far away he discovers that he feels things he didn’t know he felt and returns to his city, but not before leaving traces of all his fires,” shares Mauricio Calderón Rico, its director.
The story was the filmmaker’s master’s thesis in screenwriting. Making it was not easy, but they had the chance to win some script calls and, Together with producer Araceli Velázquez and producer Daniel Loustaunau (who is her partner in Colectivo Colmena) they sought funding for two years, until they finally succeeded and in 2022 they began filming the movie.
A pot full of hormones
“The fire, in the film, is the metaphor of the character’s change, of how he matures, how he gains experience. It comes from a trauma that you will see and that has to do with his obsession with fire. Bruno begins by burning small things , records it, uploads it to the internet, and that’s how he meets more people. DThen start burning bigger things, like a hill, then a house, until we reach the most complicated and complex thing, which is the fire itself.“, says Mauricio.
Teenagers, he explains, “are a pot full of hormones and have the peculiarity that they cannot express their feelings, their emotions, as they would like, so they have to find an escape valve and, in this case, it is setting fire to things. Bruno is a pyromaniac because he has to somehow get out all those repressed feelings.“.
It’s a film that talks about sexuality, “although it’s not hypersexual. It is for children to go see it with their parents. and then they have a talk about diversity, about acceptance, because the characters explore their desires and their emotions, at first with fear and then with curiosity.”
The film is set in 2008 and “we used all this nostalgia “writing texts with a K, using a handicap camera… for a young person, 15 years is a long time, so I wanted them to see how life began at that time. Fortunately, today teenagers have a much more defined identity, they flow more easily in these matters.”
Mauricio Calderon Rico
Film director
I don’t think a film changes your life, but it does leave you with a seed of reflection, and when this becomes something collective, then it can change an entire society.
The film director recognizes that he himself was in a world like Bruno’s, “and that’s why I wanted to write it, because I can identify with it. I grew up in this heteronormative world and I discovered that I felt things that maybe I shouldn’t feel.. “Both cinema and literature open your mind, you find people similar to you.”
We asked Calderón Rico what three wishes he would make, if possible, regarding Mexican cinema. He answers: “One of my wishes would be for the resources to be doubled, because although there are quite a few, there are many people who want to make films. Another wish would be for exhibitors to have the door more open for independent film projects, and the third wish I would like to fulfill “is that the public also changed their mentality a little, that it gave us a chance to entertain them and also to reflect with us.”
Queer books, recommended by Mauricio Calderón Rico
Demian
Hermann Hesse
Editorial Alliance
See file
In my top not only of queer books, but of books in general, is Demian. There I kind of discovered all this about being queer, but without saying it, everything very veiled, this whole relationship that Demian has with Emil Sinclair and the kiss he gives him at the end… I read it at an age where I said ‘wow! ‘They kissed!’, even though he tells her that the kiss came from her mother. It’s a book that touched me.
I would highly recommend it, especially to teenagers, and because it is classic literature that will reveal something to them, it is one of those books that does not lose its relevance.
I’m afraid bullfighter
Pedro Lemebel
Booket Mexico
See file
I read this book recently and I really liked it. It is one of those curious books, because its protagonist is a trans character who is super transgressive for his time, for the place where they are located and, in addition, it is a very short, very enjoyable book.
On Earth we are fleetingly great
Ocean Vuong
Anagrama Publishing House
See file
When I read this book I felt the same way I felt when I read Hesse’s Demian. His prose reminded me a lot of him and it was also a revelation. I really liked his whole queer situation with his mother, because we have this very intense relationship with our mothers.
Liliana’s invincible summer
Cristina Rivera Garza
RANDOM HOUSE LITERATURE
See file
This is also not exactly a queer book, but there are queer characters in it. It is a book that shatters you, but it must be read. It is very powerful and, speaking of the main character, it is evident that he is queer and that has to do with what happens.
The song of Achilles
Madeline Miller
DNA
See file
Another book that has impressed me recently is Achilles, I think it’s very nice. When I read it I really liked it. Above all I recommend it to young people, because I feel that they will like it.
Green fruit
Enrique Serna
Booket Mexico
See file
‘Green Futa’, by Enrique Serna, I like it a lot because it reveals a story that was not told in those times, which is a bit like what we want to do in the cinema, tell stories that perhaps have to be kept hidden, that definitely did happen but you didn’t see them in the cinema or in books, and this book does that. Above all, the main character does not label or define himself. He simply loves and lets himself go and does not put himself in a classification, but rather falls, within the LGBT spectrum, in the B, and there is very little talk about that letter within this flag.
The evil ones
Camila Sosa Villada
Tusquets Editores SA
See file
I read this book a couple of years ago and it is also essential to understand a little about the psyche of trans people. That book seems incredible to me. I think it is one of the best I have ever read, so I would highly recommend it.
