Columbia Film School Alums Sign Their Debut in Sangre

Courtesy of Panamax Films

The sound of frantic footsteps, accompanied by distant yelling, fills the theater. A young man is being mysteriously pursued through an anonymous Mexican border town. After opening one random door, the man enters the back of an 18-wheeler, and travels across the border from Mexico to the United States. At first he has no idea where he’s headed, but the man is pleased to learn that he’s on his way to New York City.

Demonstrating heart, talent, and a willingness to break Hollywood conventions, Sangre de Mi Sangre—formerly titled Padre Nuestro—tells the story of two Mexican immigrants in New York City, both searching for a sense of family. The title translates to Blood of My Blood, which conveys one of the film’s major themes: the question of what family means, and whether blood relationships truly matter.

This is the first feature film from writer/director Christopher Zalla, whose film career seems to be off to a strong start. After winning the prestigious Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival last year, Sangre has taken a world tour of festivals and international releases. Now the film will be released in the United States, starting in New York and Los Angeles. Zalla and Ben Odell—the producer of the film—both graduated in 2004 from the Film Division of the School of the Arts at Columbia.

It was important to both Odell and Zalla that the story take place in New York City, for several reasons. “We were going for an urban, almost noir feel, so I knew I wanted to make the movie in New York,” Zalla said. While many recent movies featuring Mexican immigrants have been set in southern California or the southwestern United States, Sangre features the underground Mexican community of New York. “Mexicans started coming to New York in large numbers only 10 or 15 years ago,” Odell said. “So they live in this parallel, isolated reality, which is really different than Los Angeles, where the community has been built up for a few generations.”

Both filmmakers lived abroad before coming to film school in New York. Odell lived for years in Colombia, producing Spanish-language TV shows. Zalla lived in many places around the world as he was growing up, and became fluent in Spanish. The choice to make the film in Spanish (with English subtitles for the United States) was one that Zalla felt would bring a level of authenticity to the project.

Zalla and Odell first met at Columbia, where they shared a class during their second year. When Zalla came up with the idea for Sangre de Mi Sangre, he immediately pitched it to his classmate. “I was sitting out on Broadway,” Odell explained in a phone interview, “at the West End actually, when Chris came up to me and said, ‘I’ve got this idea,’ and he basically set up the whole movie right there, two years before I ever read the script.”

This film is their first collaboration, a creative process that Columbia encourages in its students. “The film program is great because they take almost a liberal arts approach,” Odell explained, “I was training to be a producer, but they also allowed me to take directing classes, which is cool. If you think about it, to work with directors and writers, you have to know what they’re trying to do. That’s something I think a lot of other film schools stay away from, which is too bad.”

The success of the film so far has been inspiring for both filmmakers, considering the challenges of producing an independent film shot in New York with dialogue in Spanish. The film opens in just one New York City theater—the IFC on West 4th Street—on May 16, opening in Los Angeles the next weekend. The nationwide release schedule depends on the film’s success during these first few weeks.

As for Odell’s and Zalla’s main goal for the film: “We want as many people to see it as possible,” Zalla said. The filmmakers hope their project doesn’t fade into obscurity, like many other past Sundance winners. Regardless of commercial success, though, Sangre de Mi Sangre represents a good start for these two Columbia alums.