By Josh Gardner*
Laura Baumeister’s breathtaking feature debut, Daughter of Rage / La hija de todas las rabias, premiered this week in the Discovery section at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival. Baumeister’s film is the first narrative feature directed by a Nicaraguan woman. Fusing magical realism with the intense realities of Nicaragua, the film follows 11-year-old Maria, who lives on the edge of a landfill with her mother. After a dramatic turn, Maria is forced to survive on her own, leading her on a journey to freedom.
We spoke with Laura about the power of representation, imagination, and the future of Nicaraguan cinema, just prior to the film’s premiere.
What was the genesis for the project? Is it true you were inspired by your experience working with children in Nicaragua?
When I was 16, as part of my school curriculum, we had to do three months of social work in different communities. It was a new experience for me—not only getting to know the conditions in which many Nicaraguans live, but also the playfulness and the imagination of every kid I met. I come from a certain privilege and, at the time, wondered how I could relate to the kids in a more horizontal way. Well, through imagination, because this is what we have in common. Imagination is completely free, and it's a muscle that you can train basically by yourself.
So, this stuck with me as I grew up. Over the years, I became immersed in the video art scene in Nicaragua. I also studied sociology. I merged the two and decided to pursue cinema. Working on my feature film, I realized that there are three big spheres that you have to be in love with in order to move forward on a project. One is the sphere of the characters. You have to love your characters, be really obsessed. Then there is the other sphere of conflict, and finally the sphere of the setting. I had this mother daughter relationship… Where could I put it? Where would these characters land? And this place that I encountered when I was 16, [the largest landfill in Nicaragua], was always coming to mind.
For me, it was very interesting to add another layer to this mother-daughter relationship by putting them in this context, a context that brings to mind other important issues pertaining to the ecological environment. I also felt that this catastrophic place was also a good bed for the idea of the transmutation of the mother into an animal. If the natural world is collapsing, then of course, maybe this child will dream that her mother is an animal—perhaps just in dreams is where animals are going to live for kids. So, all of this was kind of bubbling around when I decided to make this film.
The movie is called Daughter of Rage. Where does Maria's rage come from?
Maria’s rage it is a legitimized and dignifying rage. She feels mad because she no longer has her mother, but she’s not stuck in the madness, sadness, and the victimhood of this. Rather, she makes her own narrative and answers explaining what happened within her dreams and imagination. The rage is a catalyst to look for answers—it’s not a rage of destruction or self-harm. It's about creating something from rage. In this case, she makes her own tale, and her tale is that her mother is a cat woman that lives in her dreams.
Were those surreal elements always part of the story?
That was part of the idea. A previous short film of mine was about a woman that felt she was turning into a dog. Ever since that short, I fell in love with the possibilities of surrealism, and breaking the frontiers between reality and fantasy. I wanted to continue exploring this, finding out how to do it and, then, how to do it better. The idea with this film was always that the frontiers between reality and imagination were not going to be so stiff, which is also how I believe children’s minds operate.
Araceli, the actress who plays Maria in the film, commands the screen with an incredible performance. The whole film rests on her shoulders. What was the process of finding her and building this character together?
Araceli was quite a discovery. We saw 300 kids from different rural areas in Nicaragua. Initially, Araceli was actually cast for a minor role and another child was cast as Maria. When the pandemic hit I had to postpone shooting for a whole year. What happens with kids? In a year, you can become a lady. The girl originally cast as Maria grew up and changed completely. So I was faced with finding a new actress. I started looking at the casting portfolio with my DP and, suddenly, Araceli started to pop. She said, "Look at her. I can tell you, as a DP, I want to put my camera on that face. I want to put my camera on that face.”
Virginia was already cast as the mother. I said to her, "Come with me. We have to do some sessions and find out if this could be Maria.” Immediately, it was like, yes, Araceli is Maria. She has the anger, but the self-contained anger. She has the physicality. She knows her way around this type of environment. She has the relationships with the animals, but of course, she has no training, and a feature film, especially for a kid is a new world. So, for two months prior the shooting, we rented an apartment on top of my apartment, and brought in an acting coach to live there and work with Araceli every day, three to four hours a day. We built a relationship of trust, and, of course, acting skills.
This is the first feature film directed by a Nicaraguan female filmmaker. What does this means to you and what are your hopes for the Nicaraguan film industry.
Well, in Nicaragua, there have been documentaries made by women. For me, more than being one of a handful of Nicaraguan women filmmakers, it’s the knowledge that cinema is a creator of memory, a creator of identity, and culture. This is something I know as a filmmaker. I also understand that Nicaragua doesn't have an archive of cinema to look for its identity, to look for its memory. This is what was in my mind. If I'm going to do a movie in Nicaragua, which I already know is a huge task, then what is going to be the speech and the gaze that I want to communicate through?
I have reflected on this a lot. I wanted to—and I hope I have—achieve a movie of contrast, a movie in which the poles of, let's say, darkness and light, can collide, of tenderness and violence, of destruction and creation. A place that of strong polarities that coexist and sometimes make new things. This was the spirit, because I think this has something to do with Nicaragua’s identity.
What are you looking forward to about the experience of showing the film to a public audience for the first time here in Toronto?
My main desire would be that people feel the movie. I think there's a level of connection when you feel things. I hope that the movie makes you feel the ride with Maria, the ride of trying to get above the water and finally breathe. That, for me, would be ideal. And of course, after you feel this, I hope that the idea that lingers is that if we own our own narrative, if we are the writers of our stories, it is a very empowering thing. Say, you decide to tell your story in a way in which you are not only an abandoned kid or a victim of poverty and adversity, but maybe you are the daughter of a cat woman that lives in your dreams. It may sound crazy, but I think it can be empowering and free you from labels.
I’ve seen you have some films in development and I was wondering if there was anything you could tell us about your upcoming projects?
I wasn't prepared for this question! I'm working on two projects. The film I’m working on now is a post-horror film based on a true story. In this case, a women was burned in Nicaragua within a religious cult. The idea is to find a way of portraying this as the last woman and, through her, women can have their revenge from all the suffering and the punishment that has been inflicted on their bodies.
Josh Gardner is the founder of Cinema Lamont, a non-profit that fosters cross-cultural understanding through the power of world cinema. He runs Cine Mexico Now, a festival of contemporary Mexican cinema in Detroit and is a programmer at the AFI Latin American Film Festival in Washington DC.
