It’s Carmen’s last day on the set of the telenovela “Traición y Deseo”. She’s prepared to leave with a bang and perform the ultimate SLAP!

Director Statement

“I’m Still Here” was born from a Chilean magazine article on how the Latino audience is rapidly growing in the US and how this audience is still underrepresented on TV and film. Something that really stuck with me was how latinas are still mostly cast in roles of the attractive, sexual and youthful object of desire, but once they can’t fulfill that role, they automatically disappear from the screen.

One of the greatest challenges that I faced was to make a story that is purely about a woman’s world: her goals and her internal struggle. It was important that Carmen’s story didn’t rely on a romantic conflict, and that it would show the complexities of her journey about identity.

I chose the world of telenovelas because that’s the most representative genre for the latino community in the U.S. The melodrama of the telenovela is often associated to my Latin American heritage and this film was the perfect opportunity to explore that world from a comedic perspective.