MOTOCICLISTA is a simple film about the simple dream of a young girl: To ride motorcycles when she grows up. Behind her wish lies the longing for freedom and independence. But because she is getting married at a very young age, life gets in the way and her dream may never come true.

Director’s Vision for ‘Motociclista’

MOTOCICLISTA is a simple film about the simple dream of a young girl: To ride motorcycles when she grows up. Behind her wish lies the longing for freedom and independence. But because she is getting married at a very young age, life gets in the way and her dream may never come true.

While it’s one of the most normal things to not always be able to follow one’s dreams – and it’s a painful, but natural part of growing up – in some Latin American countries and regions this can be a systemic issue.

After shooting a commercial in Uruguay, I decided to stay a few weeks longer and use the money from the commercial to fund this short film / PSA as an independent passion project, with added financial support by the German production company Sterntag Film. It was an amazing experience for me on a personal level to be able to make all of my own decisions while wearing the hats of both director and executive producer for the project and to be able to make this film exactly the way I wanted it to be. With the warm help of the local service production Metropolis Films, the amazing cinematographer Diego Rosenblatt and the people of Estación Migues, the small town where we shot the film, it became an experience that I will never forget.

It was also my first time shooting on analogue 16mm film and it was an eye-opening experience for me on set to be much more restricted with the material and not really being able to see the result until the very end. But because of this, I was able to shoot much faster than on digital because I wouldn’t make 27 takes and I would work much closer with the actors, rather than sit behind a screen all day. The adventure of finding film stock, shipping it from Brazil to Uruguay and then take the undeveloped material to a lab in Belgium across three flights was a whole different story of course, but to me it was all worth it and I would definitely do it again.