By Laurent Bellaiche
Jesús Muñoz received a B.A. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. at the London Film School in England. His work has screened at international film festivals and broadcast in the United Kingdom, and Latin America. In 2018 he co-directed A Philosopher in the Arena, which grossed the highest cinema box-office for a feature documentary in Mexico and was unanimously hailed by critics. The film was picked by Pantaleon Films in the United States and distributed by iTunes in Latin America. His second documentary Tonantzin Guadalupe: The Making of a Nation, to be released in 2024, is narrated by Mexican actress Mabel Cadena (Black Panther: Wakanada Forever) and involves a cast of indigenous actors speaking in their native Nahuatl. In February 2024, he will begin filming Offsiders, a documentary portrait of a children’s football club in ‘El Segundo Barrio’, an emblematic Hispanic immigrant area in El Paso, Texas, known as the Ellis Island of the Southern United States.
Can you tell us a little bit about you, your background and education?
I was born and raised in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, Texas. Growing up I became interested in drama and did some theater acting as a child. After finishing my B.A. in economics and a theater lab program at U Penn, I decided to try out filmmaking despite the fact I had no experience whatsoever. When I enrolled at the London Film School, I didn’t even know what an F stop was. Luckly, the film course was mostly practical and technically focused. In addition to directing, I was able to learn camera work, lighting, editing, and sound recording.
Skyline of Ciudad Juárez
How does one become a film director?
There are many extraordinarily talented film directors who arrive from different crafts (writing, cinematography, theater, acting, art directing) and use diverse directing approaches. Having said that, I think the only way one can really learn film directing is by making films, no matter how short or low budget they might be. It’s like swimming or riding a bike: you can only learn by falling and riding again, by making and learning from your mistakes. It’s very instructive to have a go at screenwriting and then direct what you write, it helps understand the craft much faster. I also believe that directors who edit their material, or at least closely supervise the editing process, have a higher chance of improving their directing skills. In the end, editing is where the film takes shape, where you select and use the “raw material” you shot as a director and find out if it serves the purpose of telling a story.
What made you decide to focus on documentaries?
Documentary filmmaking has unique characteristics that fiction does not, and never will, I like that a lot. To name one, when you set out to make a fiction film, you have complete control of what will happen and how you want to capture it with the camera, it’s all planned (or at least in theory it should be). In documentary filmmaking, no matter how much research and preparation you do, you never have total control. You must ‘go with the flow’ and try to understand the dynamics of any given situation in order to capture it. The most important difference between fiction and documentary filmmaking however is the editing process. In fiction, you set out to edit the film as it was written in the script. In documentary filmmaking, you basically end up writing the script as you edit the film itself. After reviewing all the ‘reality’ you captured on camera, you put it together to hopefully craft a captivating story.
After one documentary, A philosopher in the arena (that tells the striking story of a well-known philosopher from Ecole Normale Superieure and his unusual passion for tauromachy), and another, Tonantzin Guadalupe: the Making of a Nation (that is a fascinating view into the culture of Mexico via the origin of the Virgin of Guadalupe), you are now filming a documentary about soccer. Can you tell us more about this last documentary and why such a subject captivates you?
It takes place in the U.S. southern border cities where I grew up, Ciudad Juárez and El Paso. On the U.S. side, in the heart of a historic Hispanic neighborhood called ‘El Segundo Barrio’ (right next to Trump’s border wall), sits a modest soccer field where borders are nothing more than white lines marked on the ground: this is the home of the Segundo Barrio Fútbol Club. Being one of the poorest neighborhoods in the United States, the children are exposed to heavy drug use and gang violence. Fortunately, an English social worker who settled there started this non-profit soccer club for immigrant children that allows them to play the sport at no cost, an anomaly in today’s ‘pay for play’ reality of children and youth sports in the United States. The way soccer has changed these children’s lives is truly remarkable: they learn perseverance, discipline, respect, teamwork and greatly increase their self-esteem. It prepares them for the most important contest of their lives: to take control of their future as children of Mexican immigrants in the pursuit of the American dream.
Segundo Barrio, (1975) by Los Muralistas Del Barrio, Arturo Avalos, Gabriel Ortega, Pablo Schaffino and Pascual Ramirez in El Paso, Texas
You have lived in several countries for which soccer/football is a true passion, including Mexico, Spain and England. According to you, which one is the most “crazy’’ about soccer and do you have anecdotes to tell us about such craziness?
I’ve been impressed the most by how the English live football. It’s such a part of their culture in so many ways and across so many levels. I don’t know why this is, but I suspect that the English tradition of creating clubs for almost anything might have to do something with it. While also a commercial endeavor as in all other countries, the football clubs in England still seem to have distinctive elements of what clubs are like in England, either social, sports, art, birdwatching, whatever a group of people have interest in and meet to regularly take part in. Some third division football clubs in England are broadly involved in social work, making a notable difference in the wellbeing of their communities. These football clubs have soccer as a common interest but also focus on the welfare of its members and community. I can’t say I’ve seen this in other countries to such a degree. I’m not surprised that the founder of the Segundo Barrio Fútbol Club in El Paso, Texas, which uses soccer as a tool for social change, is an Englishman.