The process of healing from grief and loss is a messy business. But what happens when you try to hide from it?
That’s the question filmmaker Merced Elizondo, who grew up in Oak Cliff where he currently lives, explores in his short film The Mourning Of. It follows protagonist Maribel, who grieves the death of her mother by attending strangers’ funerals.
“I always like to think of her, whether ironically or not, as a drug addict. She's sort of masking it – like every time she goes to a funeral, she gets like another little hit and another little hit,” Elizondo said.
The Mourning Of qualified for the Oscars after it won best live action short at the St. Louis International Film Festival last year. For Elizondo, launching an Oscars campaign means a whirlwind of press and screenings in the hopes of securing one of the coveted spots on the Oscars shortlist and the chance to receive an official nomination.
In this interview, Elizondo talks about how growing up in Oak Cliff shaped his love of film, why he chose to film his short in Texas with a mostly Mexican and Mexican American cast, and what the Oscars campaign has been like.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
The Mourning Of explores themes of grief and loss in a really new way, following our protagonist Maribel as she mourns the death of her mother by secretly attending strangers’ funerals. It's such an interesting concept. How did you come up with it?
This was based on a story that my grandmother told me back in December of 2016 when I was driving her back from Mexico to Texas. We were on a family vacation. She was telling me about these women back in Mexico called mujeres plañideras, which doesn't necessarily have a direct translation in English.
They are these women that dress up in all black and go to the funerals of strangers and mourn them and cry over their caskets and lament over the loss of this person that they never knew. I thought that was so fascinating. I was looking at pictures as I was driving and it's just so insane to see all these people dressed in black and just like wailing and crying. They're basically town criers.
So a little more than halfway through the film, the priest finally confronts Maribel about attending all these strangers' funerals. He says, “Hiding out in other people's grief certainly doesn't absolve you of having to deal with yours.” So, how did you think about showing Maribel's journey confronting her grief throughout the film?
It's interesting because what Maribel is doing is not necessarily illegal, but there's this ethical moral gray space where she's breaking bread with people who are suffering and living through the worst day of their lives having lost a mom or any parent or sibling. That's already tragic on its own.
So, Maribel is selfishly taking advantage of that for her own benefit, but at the same time it's hard to not empathize with her. She's basically grasping for straws to not move on because she loved her mother so much and so profoundly that to move on from her is to move from her mother in a way that she's not ready to do yet. Grief, the way I see it, and I think the way Maribel ultimately has to understand, it's not black and white. It's gray, like Father Tomas says at the end of the film.
So what was it like growing up in Oak Cliff and how did that shape your love of film?
My dad has a mechanic shop in Oak Cliff and I remember one day, I will never forget this, he came home with trash bags full of DVDs and Blu-rays. That was really when my love of cinema and film solidified, because it was all the Disney films like the animated classics, Lawrence of Arabia, all the Star Wars movies. I just fell in love.
I went to UT Austin. I graduated the summer of 2016 and I studied advertising. The reason I didn't go to study films was, quite frankly, I was just too scared. I didn't think that someone from Oak Cliff with my background who looked like me, who spoke like me had any business making movies.
I did an internship the summer of 2015 at NBC Universal. So I got to move to New York and work in the legendary 30 Rock building where they do SNL and Seth Meyers’ and Jimmy Fallon's TV shows. That was a push over the edge I needed to really say, I have this passion, I ought to be chasing it because I'm around everyone that's like so passionate.
Dallas has been incredibly supportive of me from the start and I don't know where I'd be if I didn't have this community of filmmakers and of talent that have supported this career that I've been able to build with them.
You've mentioned before that this movie is unique in that it was created in Texas by a mostly Mexican and Mexican American cast. Can you talk about why it was important for you to take that approach?
That has been a bit of a crucible for me since the very beginning of my career, to try to highlight not only Latino stories, but Latinos in front of and behind the camera. I've always felt that Hollywood puts us in a sandbox and only certain stories are able to come out of that sandbox. It's almost as if they're kind of looking at us going, “You're an immigrant, tell us how bad it is.” That's the spectrum of what they really care to see from us.
I think at large, my focus has been to try to normalize the integration of Latinos that goes far beyond the limited perception that this business has about us in stories that are dramatic, personal, feel cinematic and are original. I'm going to fight to do that. I always tell folks that it's time for other people to see themselves in us, too, and not just the other way around.
I know you're on this whirlwind Oscars campaign since your short film qualified by winning the St. Louis International Film Festival. So what has that been like so far?
It started Sept. 1 and it has just been a tornado of press, of doing interviews, of trying to set up screenings, trying to get the film out there. We're one of only a few shorts made by Latinos that's Oscar-qualifying in this country. I can only think of maybe six, seven others that are doing what we're doing. In Texas, we're probably one or two so it's a unique position that we're in.
I'm really trying to sell that and demonstrate that our stories belong in this space. At a time when we're being suppressed and our voices are trying to be quieted down, I think now's as good a time as any to take control of our narrative and show people we belong in the space and in any other and we're just as relevant.
Elizondo’s upcoming projects include a short film titled “And Then Everything Turned Itself Inside Out” that is being created through Netflix’s Latino Film Institute Inclusion Fellowship. He is also working on his debut feature film.
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