Film pays tribute to COVID frontline workers of New York City

Brut America

Shot realtime in pandemic-hit New York, a film about an immigrant gravedigger and his daughter premieres in the city it pays tribute to.    Brut is partnering with the Tribeca Film Festival bringing you the stories accompanying New Yorkers as their city reopens.

Transcript

00:00I think that everyone has lost someone, everyone can relate to loss, and that's why the film is about loss.

00:04We really wanted to focus on loss, because it's something that I think every human being has experienced.

00:21We actually knew we wanted to focus on an immigrant's life.

00:24A lot of the frontline workers, a lot of these essential workers,

00:28in certain jobs were immigrants, and they weren't treated the best,

00:31or they had to keep working because they had to pay the rent.

00:42We had the New York State lockdown with the pandemic.

00:44This could be something very intriguing to dive a little bit deeper into the emotions

00:49of what people have been going through, or will go through,

00:51for the next few months, a year. We had no idea at that time.

00:58I think the biggest challenge in the beginning was,

01:22how are we going to find a graveyard that can resemble New York City?

01:26In the middle of the pandemic, because things were so bad,

01:29there was no place we can actually get a cemetery.

01:41Cemetery scene was shot up in Wyndham, New York.

01:43It was one of Dennis's friends, actually.

01:46He has acres of land upstate.

01:48So we asked, they said, hey, can we come upstate and dig a bunch of holes

01:53and create a cemetery in your backyard and bring a 50-person cast and crew with us?

01:58And luckily, he said yes.

01:59But I mean, we had excavators, major machinery,

02:02just building this massive cemetery.

02:05Initially, it was supposed to be only 20 holes.

02:07And then we started seeing, and we're like,

02:09visually, finally putting all these pieces together.

02:11This has to be triple the size.

02:13And we got to work, and then 48 hours later,

02:16nonstop digging, creating, and manipulating these holes was exciting.

02:23So what's beautiful about LALAC is that it's not a film about COVID.

02:42So the COVID elements are there, the masks and whatnot.

02:45But COVID is just a tool that's driving the story.

02:47It's in the background.

02:48It's really about a relationship between a father and a daughter.

02:52And how they're dealing with a loss.

02:55And I think that's what makes it unique.

Category

Transcript

Recommended