Gal S. Castellanos
Graduate of the Bachelor's degree in Audiovisual Arts from the Department of Image and Sound at the University of Guadalajara (DIS). A being in transition. Detective of everyday life. Narrative researcher. He has participated in the production of more than 20 audiovisual projects, primarily serving as assistant director. Among some of the notable projects are the fiction feature films: El rey de todo el mundo by filmmaker Carlos Saura; El círculo de los mentirosos by Nancy Cruz; La Eterna Adolescente by Eduardo Esquivel; Martinez by Lorena Padilla; and Un mexicano en la Luna by Francis Levy. As well as documentary feature films: Off the road by José Permar and El viaje de Paty by Santiago Pedroche. As a creator, he works with experimental narratives, exploring self-reference as a performative and social tool. He made his documentary debut Mi pecho esta lleno de centellas (My chest is full of sparks), winner of the best Mexican documentary award 2024 at the FicMonterrey Film Festival and the Zanate Documentary Festival in Colima. He has been awarded grants from PECDA 2019, Docs Lab Plataforma Mx, DocsMX, TRIBECA Co-production Forum, FICG Co-production Forum, Re Focus Fund Inside Out, Filma Jalisco 2022, FOCINE 2021 and 2023, Proyecta 2021. He has conducted workshops with young people sharing the documentary experience and writing as a mechanism of resistance against violence at DESPERTARTE 2015 and PRONAPRED 2016. As well as the authorial voice writing workshop at POLOS AUDIOVISUALES IMCINE 2020 and 2021. He was production manager for the documentary chair at the University of Guadalajara within the Territorios Interiores project and junior creative advisor in 2017 and 2018. He is currently developing his second film Las tropicales de la tierra (The Tropicals of the Earth)
We Had the Desire to Break It All
During an impossible summer in Havana, Ava, a young trans Cuban woman, devises a bold plan: to shoot a fiction film that allows her to kiss Marcos—the boy she desires—repeatedly. In reality, he cannot reciprocate her feelings, but on camera, he can. As a film student adrift in the city, I become part of her adventure. Together, we use cinema as a sanctuary to rewrite our own story and escape a reality in crisis.
Docu-Fiction Short
We Had the Desire to Break Everything is an affirmation of the sentiment of a dissident generation of young Latin Americans confronting a world in crisis. This first- person documentary explores the cracks in that reality through the friendship and longings of its protagonists. In this project, I allow myself to construct a fiction as a legitimate form of action to transform reality. The performativity of cinema becomes the narrative device that grants us access to the intimate universe of the characters.