Zulekha Chaka & Jon Gutierrez in Santi
‘Santi’ was recently shown at the BFI Southbank as a part of the BFI Future Film Festival Official Programme 2022, having been one of 50 films out of 1000 submissions selected for screening. It represents the opening scene of what will become a feature film
Writer/Director Harry Richards read Spanish and History at Edinburgh University and to complete his studies chose to go to South America for 10 months: -
“I hadn’t planned to go to Colombia. I planned to go to Chile for a teaching job. But I didn’t feel that teaching was the right journey for me. Then a friend said “I’ve got this internship at a Colombian newspaper, El Tiempo, and I need to find someone to replace me in Bogotá!” And I said: “Well actually, I do know someone that will do it! I will!” (he laughs).
Since he was a child, Richards, having a passion for all things visual, jumped on every opportunity to film, be it family holidays or other activities. Having had some experience at acting at school he had ended up making two short films (Glass People, 2019 and Year 13, 2016) so when El Tiempo offered him work in the Social Media Department he was delighted: -
“They said: If you have any particular projects that you want to pursue, you can, whether it be video or writing. So, I would travel on the weekends and they let me put this travel series together for their website. I produced 4 different videos about Bogotá. Medellín, Cauca…”
Harry Richards filming Santi.
When he changed his choice of destination from Chile to Colombia, Richards found many people were warning him of what he might find: -
“Lots of people told me to be careful: ‘It’s dangerous’. When I got there, sure, there were elements of danger , but it wasn’t so different from my experience at home and I think it made me realize that we develop these ideas of other cultures that we don’t understand, and we carry prejudices and misconceptions, and it’s only by travelling, spending time and living in other places that we learn to realign those judgements.”
His experiences of life in Bogotá also sparked the idea that was to become the basis of this short film and his subsequent feature: -
“I spent 6 months living in Bogotá. So much of it was incredibly exciting, having all these new experiences but what I didn’t foresee was how isolating it can also be. Even when you can read and write the language, and speak it, there are so many cultural nuances and parts of the language and the culture, and the humour, that you don’t understand. It was that feeling of isolation being away from home, particularly because I was also away for Christmas, that led me to write this script. When I got back, I started having conversation with people about this story and it became clear that many people have also had these feelings when travelling. My Colombian friends, Marvin and David had had exactly that experience when they came to the UK. I suddenly realized that it was something that everyone could engage with… I write in a very visual way. I think about colour and light and the moving image and how these different elements work together to create a feeling. I believe that this feeling of isolation and homesickness,[that] is so intense, and then the feeling of relief when you do get to speak to your family, can only be conveyed through a visual medium, with all the elements, like music sound, and colour, all working in harmony.
The leads in the short film are ‘Santi’, are played by Jon Gutierrez as Santi, and Zulekha Chaka as Violet. Casting them was not an easy ride for Richards and his executive producer Marvin Vivas. Finding the right actor to play Santi was particularly difficult: -
“Although it was quite easy finding the supporting cast through the traditional home-casting networks, because there’re a lot of middle-class British actors looking for work, finding a Colombian actor living in London who also spoke English, was not an easy feat.
So, the executive producer Marvin and myself went to key Colombian hubs in London. We went to the Elephant & Castle, & Brixton and every restaurant and bar, hairdressers, supermarkets basically saying: “We have a project and we are looking for someone to play this role…” That day we met some terrible actors … we had parents saying: Oh, come on, Julio’s fantastic! He’s going to be the next Hollywood star …”
We got the end of the day and we hadn’t met anyone that quite had it. Luckily, someone suggested we join all these Colombians in London Facebook groups and two days later, the most brilliant self- tape arrived in our in-box, which was Jon Gutierrez. The producer and I immediately knew this was the man for the challenge.”
Jon Gutierrez was born in the UK to South American parents and lived in Colombia as a child. By age 16, he was already performing in Jonathan Harvey’s ‘Tomorrow I’ll be Happy’, and later, he appeared at the National Theatre in ‘Connections 2013’. Zulekha Chaka, also British, is an experienced actress, who has played the lead in the American Police film ‘Outwitting the Devil’ (as police detective Jean), and, being very versatile, has also performed in comedy and horror productions, as well as being a writer herself.
Ed Piercy as Ollie
The short Santi (2021) is being taken around the festivals, but now in the autumn, Richards and the producers are going out their way to screen the film at Universities, for a very good reason: -
“We are screening it there and holding Q&A sessions afterwards, with different members of the team and myself, to prove to our prospective investors [for the feature film] that there is a clear 18-24 audience because that is our target group. Also, during the autumn, we will also be in the early development phase & research. We’ll be holding interviews with different Colombians who’ve had similar experiences when they moved to London. Also Colombians who have dealt with grief, as that is quite a big aspect in the feature film plot, we will be putting all the material together so we can start pitching in January, for the development finance.”
With a passion for Colombia and Latin American culture, it is not a surprise that Richards loves Alfonso Cuarón’s film ‘Roma’ (2018) that mesmerized audiences and was nominated for an Oscar.
“It’s one of my all-time favourite films. After I lived in Colombia for 6 months. I then lived in Mexico City, in Roma, so that was a part of why it holds a special place in my heart. Also, the style of it, the combination of beautiful cinematography with the lighting & the sound design, how it was so real, so vivid and so rich! The way the camera moved through the scenes and as it moves you hear the different sounds of the different places and it’s so specific. Having lived in that area, as soon as I watched it, I could feel how authentic it was to the place and the people. I think that level of detail and authenticity and character was really something that I took into Santi, with that discipline of trying to create and pinpoint where the sounds are coming from, and treating the extras, not as extras, but as actors in the scenes, each one with their own story. We built character profiles for the supporting actors and worked with them to find what their character traits were, what they would be talking about and trying to create those real conversations. It’s something I am most proud of, as I think that when you watch the film you feel like you’re in a sort of university or post-university type house party. It is harder than people think, to create that kind of authenticity because you need those real conversations to make it work.”
The film short ‘Santi’ therefore acts as a teaser for what will be the feature film. In it, Richards took great care with the lighting and the framing to convey the emotions that were in the scenes: -
“That decision was based on how Santi feels at this point in the story. He’s quite trapped and claustrophobic, with that tight framing using certain lenses that gives it this real sense of tightness so that Santi cannot really escape. It brings you close to the character and gives you a sense of intimacy and while he can hear things, the fact that we don’t necessarily get to see or hear the conversations that he must be able to hear in the distance gives us this unsettling feel. From the minute we started looking at the lenses, I knew that it had to be really tightly focussed on Santi. It’s only when Santi takes a step outside that we pull back a bit.”
‘Santi’ conveys emotions with minimal elements and bodes well for the forthcoming feature.
“Follow SANTI’s progress on Instagram: @santithefilm."
