His masterclass began an hour late after the FIFA World Cup clash between Colombia and Switzerland ended on penalties, leaving the opening day crowd at the Bogotá Audiovisual Market (BAM) visibly deflated by their eventual loss. Upon taking the stage before a subdued audience, the Mexican Alonso Ruizpalacios acknowledged the collective disappointment by turning to Elizabeth Butcher’s poem. an art.

“In it I also found refuge when Mexico lost. I will read it and see if it speaks to you as it does to me,” he said, before reciting the complete poem, which begins:

“The art of losing is not difficult to master; so many things seem to be filled with the intention of losing themselves that their loss is not a disaster.”

“I’m not a big football fan, I swear, I’m not really, but I had to become one because of my kids’ obsession with the game. And I think one of the most valuable things they’ve learned through it is how to lose. How to lose gracefully,” he continued.

“I think it’s an incredibly important lesson, because losing is much more common than winning,” he said, adding, “I think that’s true in film, too. For me, one of the biggest lessons has been learning to lose: accepting that a film won’t always live up to your expectations, that you won’t win a grant, that you’ll have to start over and try again. It’s about becoming resilient. I guess it’s something that comes gradually over the years.”

talking to Variety Before his BAM Talk, presented by Mediapro, Ruizpalacios talked about his upcoming adaptation of the novel by Carlos Fuentes Aura for netflix. “I’m not approaching it as a literal, page-by-page translation of the novel to the screen, but as a reinterpretation of it.”

About his adaptation of another novel, The transmigration of bodies of the Mexican writer Yuri Herrera, whom he considered “one of the best novelists writing today,” he said: “It is set during an epidemic, fictional, but it inevitably brings COVID to mind, although the novel was written before the pandemic, it turned out to be almost prophetic.”

“But it is an epidemic of sadness, of something that is never fully defined. In that context, the story unfolds as a kind of chilango noir, that is, a noir from Mexico City. It is deeply rooted in the atmosphere and character of Mexico City.” Presented at the Berlinale Co-Production Market earlier this year, it already has five co-producing countries signed on, he said, naming Spain, France and Chile among them.

Reflecting on his four films, which BAM was honoring with a retrospective, beginning with “Güeros,” which launched his career, he reflected on what he calls his ‘problem child,’ the black-and-white film “The Kitchen,” which was “a challenge from start to finish.”

“Getting the financing was especially difficult. It took us many years. Finally we would get someone on board, and then the deal would fall through. Filming was also difficult, because coordinating actors from different parts of the world and getting them together in one place was incredibly complicated. We brought everyone together for a month before we started filming; we spent a whole month rehearsing. Making that happen was difficult, but it was something I really wanted: to have the entire cast rehearse together before filming.” Finding distribution in the United States was an even bigger challenge, given its immigration issue, he added.

Speaking about co-production on his BAM Talk, he said: “I think it’s just the reality of cinema today. Every time you watch a film, the opening credits list the co-producers for what seems like 10 minutes. That’s the way it is, there’s no way around it.”

“There’s something fundamentally right about working that way. We no longer live in a time where public funding alone could finance an entire film. Those funds are getting smaller, so you have to pool funding from different sources. There’s also something deeply stimulating about that process. It’s the only way to survive if you’re making unconventional, non-hegemonic cinema. If a streaming platform won’t pay for your film, this is the only viable path.”

“It’s also the only way to stand up to mainstream commercial cinema, which I honestly think is at one of its lowest points. I genuinely believe that Hollywood cinema has reached… a breaking point,” he said, lamenting the abundance of sequels, spin-offs, reboots and the like.

When asked what he thought about the thorny topic of AI and its progressive dominance, he said: “First of all, I really love what I do. I love writing. That’s why I find this rush towards artificial intelligence disturbing. As a tool, it’s perfectly fine. But this widespread acceptance of it – the almost frantic enthusiasm – seems dangerous to me. It feels like we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.”

“What AI doesn’t really take into account is that the point is not just the result: the point is the process. That’s the human experience. The human experience lives in the process. I love sitting down to write. I love looking up exactly the right word, rewriting a sentence, opening a thesaurus, flipping through a thesaurus and finally finding the precise word I’m looking for. That process gives me pleasure. Therefore, this obsession with efficiency, with the end result, doesn’t interest me. “I don’t think that life It’s about saving time. Save time for what? The goal is to spend it doing what you love.”

He called for more independent cinema as “almost an act of resistance.”

“We can’t just make movies that only moviegoers see. I think we have a responsibility to engage audiences, to help re-educate them, in a sense. That’s incredibly important.”

“What we need are Trojan horses,” he said. “I’m a big believer in the Trojan horse. By this I mean what Martin Scorsese has described about Hollywood directors of the 1940s and 1950s. Many of them were European filmmakers who came with a genuine artistic background and a true artistic calling, but found themselves working within the entertainment industry. So they had to smuggle anti-establishment ideas, political thought and complex artistic content into the framework of commercial entertainment.”

“I think today we need to create more Trojan horses: works that can exist within streaming platforms, for example. I even fantasize about making a film for TikTok one day: a film that you would watch in 15-second episodes and that gradually turns into something bigger. I don’t know exactly what it would look like, but I think there’s something worth exploring there, he said, adding: “I don’t think it’s enough anymore to make contemplative films, no matter how beautiful they are. “I love those movies, they are a refuge for me, but I think we also need to find new ways to reach people where they already are.”

The 17th edition of BAM will be held from July 6 to 10.