An undocumented gay man leaves his life in Mexico behind in search of a better future in Director Heidi Ewing’s drama, I Carry You with Me.
Ewing’s film is a decades-spanning romance that tells the story of Iván (Armando Espitia), a young aspiring chef in Mexico who works at a restaurant, hoping to land a spot in the kitchen while supporting the mother of his child. One night he meets Gerardo (Christian Vázquez), a handsome teacher who, unlike Iván, is out as a gay man. After the discovery of their romance causes conflict, Iván is told he can no longer see his son and he makes the painful and arduous decision to cross the border to advance his culinary career, promising his son and newfound love he will return.
On March 5, Ewing discussed the making of I Carry You with Me in a DGA Virtual Q&A moderated by Director Rodrigo García (Four Good Days).
During the conversation, Ewing spoke about working with her DP and the actors to get what she would need later in the editing room for a vital scene in the film. “He [DP Juan Pablo Ramirez] understood what I was going for, which is this naturalism, this voyeurism, this hyper-intimacy between these men. Catching all the things that are not said is the most interesting thing about a scene. And so we got into this rhythm and this groove of all these awkward silences or sexy silences and ‘what must he be thinking?’ and I would have the actors sort of do a scene without doing any dialogue so they would run the scene doing the dialogue in their head. A lot of times we got these incredible expressions when they would do that. I needed a lot of nonspeaking moments. My editor was going to need them, and it can be awkward for actors to do that and so we came up with a lot of little tricks and ways for them to feel comfortable so that we could get these expressions on their faces.”
I Carry You with Me is Ewing’s narrative feature directing debut. She and her documentary directing partner, Rachel Grady, are also the co-directors of Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, DETROPIA, 12th and Delaware, Freakonomics, the Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp, and the Emmy-nominated The Boys of Baraka. Ewing has been a DGA member since 2009.
You can listen to Ewing's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.
About the DGA Virtual Q&A Program
Mirroring the ever-popular DGA Membership Screening Q&A program in the virtual space, DGA Members can now learn more about films directly from the filmmakers in this series of livestreamed conversations.
