The Spotlight: Kristian Mercado
FREE THE WORK creator Kristian Mercado talks about their experience making their latest animated short film, “Nuevo Rico”, and shares advice on navigating awards season.
By Daisy Gonzalez, Content Specialist for FREE THE WORK.
“The Spotlight” is a column in which we follow under-the-radar contenders as they break ground in the awards space.
Kristian Mercado Figueroa (Director, Writer) is a Puerto Rican filmmaker based out of Spanish Harlem. Mercado’s distinct voice addresses issues of identity, family, and systemic oppression across race and class. His work is celebrated for its poetic portrayal of working-class struggles, highlighting the gaps between love and loss.
We caught up with him during an ongoing festival run, most recently at the Puerto Rico Film Festival where Nuevo Rico went home with the award for Best Animation in the National Short Film category.
What are you most excited for audiences to experience in your film?
I love how an audience reacts to this shot of the twins as fetuses. It is so iconic, and an image that sticks in people’s minds when they see it. It makes people think and feel a lot of different things. The family ties, Puerto Rican origins, being born into reggaeton as a feeling, it’s such a unique moment. I love that we then follow into the title card, an advertisement for tourism. It’s presented in this dark, colonized sort of way. It tells you so much about the world and dynamic of Nuevo Rico, and Puerto Rico.
The music of the film overall and the songs played are critical to understanding why we love Barbie and Vico. The robot cops say a lot, and then hit on the theme of music, and how that connects this world and characters in a way we don’t expect.
Your film has played at a lot of well-known festivals and opened to a lot of critical acclaim. Tell us a little bit about your trajectory and what it has been like for you and your team to get your film in front of the right folks.
It’s always difficult to gauge where a short will play or get screened. I feel blessed that we’ve been received so well during our festival run. Additionally, I feel it’s been such a crazy journey.
Screening at SXSW kicked us off in an epic way. We won there, and then it felt like a storm of interest hit our short, and eventually, we went on to win [awards] at multiple cool festivals. Among them Fantastic Fest, which struck me and took me by surprise. The LALIFF win felt like finding a new family, being supported by the film community at large.
Our film is an underdog film, it’s not a story you see often, in a way you see often. I think it’s rare to have such a Latinx production that reflects its creators and crew/cast being of that world. It’s insanely rare. I think it surprises people, and they feel it’s new, unseen work, and crave more of that in the world.
What has the awards campaign process been like? What do you wish you knew when you started?
Oh man, I think it’s such a difficult thing to understand. It’s been a wild ride to see people project us going far in awards season. We hope for it in a big way. It also has been teaching me a bit about access to the awards and how that works. #OscarsSoWhite still comes to mind. It’s hard for marginalized creators to get their work front and center during this process. Especially animation, when the field is stacked by studios with deep pockets. It’s been a learning process.
We’re blessed to have a super talented savvy producer guiding us, Kate Chamuris who has been through it a few times, shedding a lot of light on the process. I think my approach has been to be humble, trust in the work that this team created and keep asking questions. The work speaks for itself and has a lot to say about colonization, Latinx identity, and our current status as Puerto Ricans.
Understanding how much resources it takes to “campaign” is pretty eye-opening. We have been gifted with not only support from the many jurors and programmers who believe in the film’s artistry and message but also those in the animation field who want to shepherd the emerging diverse voices behind the film to the next level.
What advice do you have for any filmmakers that may be new to awards/festival campaigning?
Always try your best. Just jump into it as soon as possible. I think filmmakers should jump on submitting to festivals as soon as they can, and find ways to finish and show and share work.
Festival runs are kind of like a clock that counts down. It’s a process that takes a year, allowing you to discover your audience. Submitting in itself is a job. It’s very taxing. Rejection shouldn’t deter people from submitting. I think it’s a matter of trying and sharing work with passion and love. People can always sense when you make something out of love VS for a festival. If you make any piece of work, it should be coming from an earnest place of love, not motivated by where it screens. When your film is guided by the truth inside you, people can sense that.
Nuevo Rico is produced by Jackie Cruz (Orange Is the New Black), Angel Manuel Soto (director of the upcoming BLUE BEETLE — DC’s first Latinx superhero), Debora Perez, and Kate Chamuris. Directed by Mercado Figueroa from a script by Mercado Figueroa and Juan Arroyo, the short is executive produced by Mercado Figueroa, Jackie Cruz, Maitreya Yasuda, Mike Anderson, and Jeff Hood.
Visit Kristian Mercado’s creator profile on FREE THE WORK and add him to your creator playlist.
Daisy Gonzalez is the Content Specialist for FREE THE WORK. You can connect with her via culture@freethework.com and by following FREE THE WORK on Twitter and Instagram.
