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Iris Almaraz is an East L.A. Chicana filmmaker, writer, and producer. After receiving her BFA in Cinema from San Francisco State, her first short film Someter (2005) made its premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival. She then directed her first feature, Delusions of Grandeur (2012), which debuted at Cinequest with an encore sold-out screening and festival director at L.I.F.E (Latina Independent Film Extravaganza). Three of her projects have also been second-round finalists at the Sundance Writing Lab, including Rocket Ship, a short film which was the 2023 recipient of the East Side Arts Initiative. In 2024, she released another short, Red Onion, that she presented at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival in June 2024. Iris Almaraz is also the Festival Director at L.I.F.E. (Latina Independent Film Extravaganza), which is based in Los Angeles and seeks to support the Latina community.

Emilie Cheyroux is an Associate Professor in American and Film Studies at the University of Toulouse (Champollion Institute in Albi, CAS Toulouse Jean Jaurès). Her primary research is in Film Festival Studies but she has also published several articles about the way Immigrant Rights Documentaries engage the audience. Her research focuses on the social impact of film festivals, especially Latino film festivals organized in the United States.

Emilie Cheyroux: Could you tell me about yourself and your background?

Iris Almaraz: In the USA, I’m considered biracial. I’m Mexican and my mom’s Italian. But what’s interesting for me is that I live on the land that was once Mexico. And obviously before that, we must acknowledge the First Nations people whose land we’re on. With that being said, my Mexican side is actually more Americanized, and my mom reminds me that Italians were immigrants. She’s first generation and my dad’s side has been here 100-125 years. So I feel like an outsider in my own country but then I also feel like an outsider in my two cultures. I really don’t identify or resonate with the Italian side because I live in East L.A. and East L.A. is over 90% Mexican-American/Mexican. But when I went to Italy, I was like, “Oh, there it is. It’s the arguing in the hands. I do that, too” [laughs]. So sometimes you have cultural affiliations you don’t really recognize. As a Mexican-American, I identify with the word Chicana, which is to have a self-reflection of yourself in a non-Eurocentric way to honor and respect your indigenous ancestors as the primary focus of your existence as a Chicana. You really have to take the step to identify as that. I won’t just call someone a Chicana unless I know they identify as one because it has a political statement behind it, which usually stands with being anti-war because many Chicanos were disproportionate fatalities of the Vietnam War, for instance. So that’s my identity: Chicana, Mexican-American. I’ve lived in East L.A. primarily. I’m not from there—you know, in our culture we’re very strong about where we’re from because where you’re from is your neighborhood, it is your community. I’m not from East L.A., even though my dad was born here, my kids were raised here, my husband was born and raised here, and I’ve lived here the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere. But I still wouldn’t ever say I’m from East L.A. I’m from El Monte, which is a suburb of East L.A. It’s very Mexican-American, Chicano-American, and there’s something kind of special about it to me. It has a long history of music coming out of East L.A. I feel strongly connected to a history that includes car culture and cruising down the Boulevard; it’s freestyle music, but it’s also Morissey and, you know, Depeche Mode, and Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin, and The Doors. In our neighborhood, you’ll hear people driving around because, in Mexican culture, music is so loud everywhere. You’ll hear people drive by Santa Mariachi or Abandara, and then, there’s someone else driving by blasting Led Zeppelin. And that is what a Chicano or Chicana Mexican-American is to me. That’s my culture. That’s my history.

Emilie Cheyroux: Could you also tell me about your education, the jobs you’ve had. 

Iris Almaraz: I do have a little bit of an interesting history as a child. My mother is mentally ill; she self-medicated with narcotics. When I was a kid in the 1970s, it first started with cocaine, and then it led to crystal meth, which exacerbated the mental decline, and then by the 1990s, she had three boys. I was already in my 20s by the 1990s so my sister and I were kind of trying to wrangle these brothers. We lived in motels; we didn’t go to school and, when we were kids, my mom took us stealing in department stores. Something I had to recognize as an adult about my mom was the time period she grew up in. We didn’t go with her at first and I would be alone in the house, which was very traumatic because at six or seven years old, I taking care of other kids, not knowing if she was going to come home or not, because I knew that she was involved in illegal activity. I visited my mom in prison through the glass window, and then when she was out, that was an incredible crazy pressure. We stole VCRs, microwaves, mostly clothing and then sold it. I went to juvenile hall. Later, my sister and I figured out that my mom probably stole well over a million dollars. So we lived in motels and then my mom hid us from our father, who was a Chicano activist. My father marched with César Chávez and Angela Davis. He was at UCLA in the late 1960s and he fought for Chicano rights. When he was a student, there were only forty Chicano students; after their protests, the next year there was over a thousand. He was also a very active anti-war activist. I wasn’t around my dad during those years when my dad was working as a teacher, getting a teaching credential. And my mom really did a lot of mental manipulation and made him this evil person. 

But when I was in juvenile hall, my dad had been looking for me. He has a very big family, hundreds of Mexican-Americans, over a hundred years in the United States. It’s huge! He had been looking for me, and the family had been praying. They’re very religious, not necessarily conservative, but they are very spiritual-based people. I don’t practice any particular religion, but I do believe in spiritual energy and I do believe that their collective energy was drawing me to them. I later found out that my uncle who was married into the family found me because he was a social worker. He saw my name, Iris, which is a very unique name, and they knew the activities my mom was involved in. So my uncle said to my dad, “There’s a girl who’s your daughter’s age named Iris who has a court date.” When my dad saw me on that day, we all panicked in the waiting area. The judge gave me an option to go back to juvenile hall for nine months for my probation, or to go live with my dad who I didn’t know. I said I wanted to be with my dad, but my mom asked me to tell the judge that I’d rather go to juvenile hall. I told you that story just to give an idea of the person we were with. And God bless her! I let her be around my kids. She’s well-medicated now. I’m not bitter or mean around her but I don’t have a relationship with someone like that. So I didn’t know what being a mom was until I had my own kids and learned to be a mother. 

When I went to go live with my dad, people thought it meant salvation because I went to art school. My dad and stepmom were teachers. I had missed years of school and suddenly, I had two teachers in the house. It was total trauma! It was constant vocabulary, correcting the way I spoke because I didn’t speak proper English. I went from the streets of L.A. to the suburbs, which were predominantly white, and I also went from criminal activity to church camp, so I very much felt like an outsider. But there was one constant: my passion for movies. I loved escaping into movies, and watching old movies, classics, and kid movies. 

I was into The Bad News Bears (Michael Ritchie, 1976) and Little Darlings (Ron Maxwell, 1980); these were 1970s and 1980s kids’ movies. They were so much better than they are now because they didn’t play dumb to the kids. But I grew up in a generation where we had limited channels to watch. So you watched old movies, you watched The Three Stooges (1922-1970), you watched The Little Rascals (ABC, 1982-83), you watched the classics because it was the only thing on TV. I loved escaping into the reality I wanted, which is why, as an adult filmmaker, it really took me a while to heal so that I could sit in the reality I live. 

As a high school student, I went to an arts high school, which is where I met my husband; it’s a very prestigious Arts High School in L.A. I studied theater and I really felt go, even though I was pissed off all the time.

Let me tell you an anecdote. When I was in Mexico, a lady, an older Mexican woman, was reading my palm and she said that my lifeline was broken in half. She said, “You have two lives.” And she was right! My next life was the arts. I was really passionate about the arts. Everything: arts, music, visual arts, film. I had a wonderful experience in high school because all the students were into art and you’re really influenced by each other at a beautiful time period when your brain is so open.

But there, I would be walking around to pick up groceries and then transgender women who were working on the streets would talk to me and be like, “Oh, you look good, honey.” Their experience gave me compassion for seeing me in a way that I didn’t see myself. That’s why Delusions of Grandeur was such an important film for me. It was about this young woman who is grunge in the beginning and, by the end, she has that retro Sophia Loren look. It is through the friendships with the eclectic people of San Francisco that I could create this character. That was a huge factor in my life.

Emile Cheyroux: Like most women…

Iris Almaraz: It doesn’t make you not be a filmmaker. It just means you may not be actively making films. I made a few things that didn’t happen. And recently I saw something where Quentin Tarantino said that for eight years, he worked on this project and then he didn’t release it because it looked like shit and I was like, “Oh, when I do that, it’s called me being a loser” [laughs]. That’s essentially my journey. 

Emilie Cheyroux: Okay. So now you’re a filmmaker and you’re making movies. Could you say more about your experience in the industry, as an artist, and as a woman? Do you feel that you didn’t have access to opportunities, funding or otherwise, because you were a woman? And have you witnessed or experience instances of discrimination you’d like to share?

Iris Almaraz: It certainly affected my generation. My generation is the Gen X generation, so we’re a smaller generation, a smaller demographic. When we came out, the Boomers was the bigger demographic. So we were smaller and we were told: “We’ve done the affirmative action; you’re all equal now.” In college, I was better than the white guys as a filmmaker [laughs]. So I came out of college thinking: “Yeah, I’m better than the white guys.” I don’t even have to work that hard at it but, you know, I didn’t realize that I was actually working hard. I thought I had the skills to go out there and do this. But I do look back and I realize that college didn’t actually prepare me for those things. Once we were out, there were no inclusion programs and we were just really put on the same level. I did not think that it was harder for me to raise money because I’m a woman at that time. I did not know that it was harder for me to raise money because my family came from a lower economic bracket. I didn’t know these things until later, when I put stuff out in festivals and saw that my feature was better than my male counterparts. They were the ones that were continuing to get jobs after through the industry and I wasn’t. Maybe I was naïve . . . Well, I was naive to think that people were just going to see the hard work and choose me. But I just have never had the skill for the business part of filmmaking. I’ve seen women who are better at it now. The younger generation is better at it. And I’ve seen women of my generation that are also better at it. But I’ve always been the artist. And that’s a problem today [laughs].

Emilie Cheyroux: But today, aspiring directors have social media.

Iris Almaraz: I know! But I am not trying to be someone I am not. That said, I might be a fifty-year-old woman, but my brain at fifty is so much better than my brain was at thirty because of my understanding of how to make a film. I don’t have as much energy, however; I’m not going to work the way I used to work, but I don’t have to so much anymore because my brain preparation skills are better. That’s experience. The thing is: we don’t want women with experience. We want women who are just starting out. We don’t want Latinas with experience. There are grants for developing up-and-coming filmmakers. It’s confusing because there’s a heavy focus on the bottom of the pyramid but there’s no focus on moving the middle of the pyramid. 

Emilie Cheyroux: What is your view of the current state of the industry and the evolution for women directors and screenwriters?

Iris Almaraz: Well, right now, it’s hard for anyone to predict what the future is with the industry [laughs].

Emilie Cheyroux: But have you noticed a difference since #MeToo ? 

Iris Almaraz: They’re creating a lot more space for women. That’s great. That’s important. And that’s something I feel proud of for the other female filmmakers of my generation. We didn’t know we were continuing to pave the ways because nobody was listening to us [laughs]. But we were there! Ten years ago, we didn’t know that we were trailblazers. I am excited for younger women—that their careers have more potential over longer periods of time. And I see the industry working towards doing that. But I also feel like there’s a lot of lip service. 

Cheyroux: What do you mean? 

Almaraz: I feel like people say, “Here’s our diversity, here’s our inclusion plan. And here we go. These are the people that we’re helping out.” But then when you look at the bigger numbers, you can’t help but wonder how often women have a chance to continue to do things, and then follow up on those things. We used to say that white males can fail up: they can make a project that fails and then continue to move up. 

Emilie Cheyroux: That’s exactly what Eva Longoria said when she released her film Flamin’ Hot (2023) last year. She said that as a female director, she could not make a mistake, otherwise she would not be given another chance to make a film. 

Iris Almaraz: That’s what it is. I’m a personality and I have a lot of male friends. I have a lot of female friends, too. I have a lot of gender and inclusive and sexually diverse friends. But I do notice that my straight male friends hang out together and I don’t get invited to hang out. I got a husband and kids and I don’t get invited to just hang out with the dudes. And I’m not saying that I necessarily want that, but that’s how jobs happen. So if they’re going to hang out with each other, that’s how the cycle continues. And I don’t know how we change that. Maybe #MeToo has helped because we do have more people that are willing to hang out without there being some sort of sexual connotation connected to it. And some of the inappropriate behaviors that I could notice in the past seem to be less likely to happen now.

Emilie Cheyroux: Going back to what you said about being a trailblazer. On your website, you identify as “a badass East L.A. filmmaker,” and you keep saying that you believe in community-based filmmaking, and that you want to help women of color. And clearly, your films are female-oriented. Do you consciously work to set an example? 

Iris Almaraz: You know, my professors in college in the 1970s were very feminist. I knew that during that time period, people weren’t identifying with feminism. But I identified with feminism. I also identified with being Chicana. To me, those were not identities or words: those were ways of thinking. So when the films came, I just very naturally followed what was inside of me, which consisted in fighting the system—to be aware of it but not to dwell on it. And then also, I really like being sexy. I am a woman who’s sexy. Sexy comes from inside, you know? And I do feel like Americans are so repressed about sex. It is super annoying. I’m someone who has been exposed to sex workers. I always like to see female sexuality in my work—women that are sexy.

My daughter is thirteen, and she’s into anime, and she likes to wear these T-shirts, and she’s super frumpy, but then she’ll put on these socks that go above her knee, that have lace with a little bow. And it’s what a little girl wears. It’s only us that make that wrong. So I’m just trying to understand that in my work. 

Emilie Cheyroux: When I think of your films, there’s one word that comes up every time in my head: it’s the word “unapologetic.” I feel like that can be an obstacle to get funds or to get ahead. What do you think? 

Iris Almaraz: You know, as Mexican-Americans we want the nice portrayal of us as lawyers and doctors and as women; we want the nice portrayal of us—these 1980s type of boss women getting ahead. But nobody wants to show the little kid growing up in the motel with the mentally abusive mom. They want to show the mom that helped her kid get to college. And at the end, she goes to college and I always wondered, “What if she went to college and couldn’t get a good job?” [laughs]. 

Emilie Cheyroux: Did you at any point want to just compromise to get funds and get into the system? 

Iris Almaraz: That’s a really good question because the only grant I’ve ever gotten is the Eastside Arts initiative.

Emilie Cheyroux: Would you care to say more?

Emilie Almaraz: I really believe a big factor was that they were able to see what my work looked like. They understood that, in Bloody Maria, I’m doing something different and the people there that have been in this business for a long time saw the artistry in it. You know, people will call me the Chicana Fellini or the Chicana John Waters. Those guys couldn’t get money either! [laughs] It is a good thing and it’s also not because John Waters didn’t get invited to film festivals. John Waters had to struggle to be accepted and understood, and Fellini was rejected over and over by his own people. 

Emilie Cheyroux: But today everybody has heard of or seen their films . . .

Iris Almaraz: Of course, and hopefully me too when I die [laughs] . . .Seriously, I do feel like it is my plight. I have tried to shoot things in a more conventional way to be hired for TV shows. I wanted to show that I could shoot conventionally, that I could edit conventionally, that I don’t have to do everything weird. But my original pieces, even when I try to fit into the box that I think goes to the top festivals, there’s still a little something that’s different or weird or strange. It’s my touch. And it’s the thing that I feel makes me unique, but I’m also doing stuff with low money because of it. [laughs]

Emilie Cheyroux: Given how aware you are of the lack of opportunities for women, is it important for you to include women in the technical crew?

Iris Almaraz: I think for any director, the most important thing is to include people you have a vibe with. That’s the first thing because with filmmaking more than anything else: you just need to feel comfortable and confident and vibe with someone. I think it’s important to include women on films, but I think it’s important to still remain true to the vibe above all else because you can put a female DP [Director of Photography] or AD [Assistant Director] in a position but if you don’t have a vibe going already, then that can be a problem. Now what’s interesting to me is to have balance. Not an all-male crew because that would also not be the vibe I would want. But I have had men that someone else brought: I did not vibe with them at first and then they figured me out and they chilled out and we ended up getting along well. This is something that’s interesting to me. I’ve met female DPs along the way and, the nature of the beast of being an independent filmmaker, you have to do what’s most economical to make your project happen. Again, the interesting thing is that there are more male DPs who have the truck and who have the equipment, right? And the camera. The female DPs don’t necessarily have the economic structure to have those things. As a female director, I have to hire the person that can bring the most to the project at the price I can afford because I don’t have the luxury of hiring the female DP and the truck and the other camera. That’s an interesting system. And I asked a female DP at a party what camera she shot on and she replied that it was not appropriate for people to ask what camera a DP shoots on because then the presumption is that the DP will supply that economic thing. So I never ask DPs; I just go to their website and see what comes with hiring them. And it’s not a sex-based thing; it’s an economic-based thing. It’s still sexism because the economic dollar for a female is still smaller than the male. I know that that is part of the system. I just don’t have the money and the resources to fight that part. That’s something that I’m aware of now. I don’t know the solution yet. And here’s the other thing: when you hire a DP, they want to bring their persons with them. So you can’t just say, “I really know this great female AC and I know this great female gaffer” because the DP has their team. My DP for this coming shoot, I don’t know who his people are. They could be females when they show up; I don’t know. A DP wants to work with their team because they start talking and they know each other; they know their equipment. And that area becomes really difficult for women to break through and I get it. I just don’t know how to combat it at this point given my financial abilities. So that’s something where I try to balance the female to male ratio, but I also work with people who know me and who’ve worked with me on shoots before and who will cut me a deal to be honest. 

Emilie Cheyroux: That’s understandable. Going back to your films, I feel like you’re inventing or you’ve been inventing new roles for women and that you’ve also played with stereotypes about what women should be, what their sexuality should be, what Chicanas or cholas should be. Do you feel that it’s your role to do that? Do you think about it or is it just natural to you? 

Iris Almaraz: Hmm . . . I see people doing their thing. I think for me, my core as an artist is . . . I’m going to be real. I like to take mushroom psychedelics [laughs]. I bring it up because it makes me feel a connection with a divine force. And I feel like whatever I do best is when I hear the thought as opposed to when I think of it. When I’m thinking and thinking and thinking, I struggle to really get there. But when I just slow down and I take some time to go on a medicinal journey or get lost in a record or have some meditation time, I hear the thought that I feel is divinely inspired. So whatever it is that I do, I feel that there is a universal force that believes in me to do that and the universal force has given me the experiences to reflect on that. Even as a child, I would pray, and I wanted to die. And I would say to God, “For whatever reason that I’m going through this, it’s beyond my understanding.” As an adult, last year, when I wrote the feature (Slash Her) about that experience as a child around the age of twelve, I had a very clear message in one of my journeys where the message was: “You have not told the story we put you here to tell.” So it’s interesting because I’ll get another idea and I’ll be like, “Oh let’s go do that instead” [laughs]. The message just comes and the divine force will give you a lot of ignitions, and what you do with that is how you grow. But that one keeps reminding me that my experiences were a gift, and that as a filmmaker, I have to tell the story that I was put here to tell. 

Emilie Cheyroux: Okay, that’s very interesting. 

Iris Almaraz : Yes. So that’s my answer because I think the less I think about it, the better I am. 

Emilie Cheyroux: So it comes naturally to you. When you wrote that scene about Santa Claus in Bloody Maria, with that young woman peeing in the street, did you have something in particular in mind?

Iris Almaraz: That was my scene! The Santa Claus scene was my co-writers’ idea. That’s another gift that the universe brings to me: I do bring people in and I’m like, “Yes, I like when we talk, crazy shit gets written down.” So I feel like the Santa Claus scene was one of those things where I have two co-writers and I don’t know if it was me or if that was the three of us. I want to acknowledge that. The pissing outside that I did, but the girl that threw the ax through the window, that was not me [laughs]. 

Emilie Cheyroux: That conversation about Santa Claus was so funny because they all had their own point of view, their own personality and yet they’re all friends. 

Iris Almaraz: That was something I really wanted to do with that show because the way I see cholas is like the 1970s punk movement in London, right? I feel like cholas are that same thing. And Chicanos just haven’t been acknowledged for their cultural impact. People assume that chola equals gang member, and that is not accurate. 

Emilie Cheyroux: That’s actually the definition of chola you find online by the way. 

Iris Almaraz: Okay, great [laughs]. The thing about cholas is that they have individual personalities; it’s in their names in my film: Smiley, Loca . . . For example, one of my cousins, she’s always smiling and cracking a joke but I wouldn’t fuck with her [laughs]. And then I found out her sister, who’s the sweetest person ever, beat up some guys. I couldn’t imagine that she would do that because she was so loving and kind to me as a kid. 

Emilie Cheyroux: They’ve got temper and personality, like most female characters in your films. 

Iris Almaraz: They’re warriors. That’s something that I’ve learned on a medicinal journey—that our community is in a battle against being marginalized. So when you lump all these characters in and give them the same personality, you marginalize that. One thing I like to do as a writer, I like to write down the cliché and think about what that person would say to realize that that person would say something else. That was a constant conversation with my co-writers on Bloody Maria. I’m very proud of that project because they’re all basically in Catholic outfits. They should be the same kind of personality and we very intentionally made them different. 

Emilie Cheyroux: It totally works! 

Iris Almaraz: Thank you. 

Emilie Cheyroux: There were a lot of people at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival last June [2024] who came to see your short film, even though it was right before a long feature. I noticed that the filmmaker of the feature [Memories of a Burning Body, Antonella Sudasassi Furniss, 2024] knew that many people had come for you.

Iris Almaraz: I am glad that they put my film in front of her film because she could have a different audience. I am a local filmmaker. The festival actually made a smart move. And I loved her film. And people loved her film. 

Emilie Cheyroux: That’s when I realized that L.A. is probably smaller than I imagined when it comes to the filmmaking world.

Iris Almaraz: Everyone knows everyone. You constantly run into people over and over again. Just don’t burn bridges. Something I had to learn is how to be polite and nice and cordial without making a friendship investment. I used to be friends right away, then things would fall apart, so now I like to build friendships. The producer on the film I’m doing on right now, Rocketship, we’ve known each other over ten years and this is our first project together. I’ve known my DP for over twenty-five years and it is our first time working together so I’m at that point now: there’s a vetting system. 

Emilie Cheyroux: It is understandable, but did you benefit from the film market that LALIFF launched this year? Did you use the festival to network? 

Iris Almaraz: I did do a little because sometimes it’s nice to run into people you’ve seen before. One of the things I’m really bad at is remembering where I’ve seen people, whereas other people, they go online and research the person right away; they’ve got all the research going on. But I am bad at the schmoozing and the networking. Let me give you an example. I saw a woman’s face, and I kept looking at it because she had such a distinct face; she reminded me of Maria Callas, the opera singer, and I kept looking at her because her face was familiar to me. Then she started looking at me uncomfortably, and then she whispered something to another woman. When she walked by I said, “Excuse me, have we met before?” She said we had met at the UTA Conference, which is the United Talent Agency; it’s a huge agency. I’m fifty; it was for students, but I didn’t care; I sat in the front. I considered that I was a student, and I was an MFA screenwriting student at that moment. I probably looked like the oldest person there. So she probably wondered what I was doing there. I asked questions; I engaged and I refused to shy away and be the older frumpy woman who sits in the back. And I knew I was not a young student. So she remembered me, which can be good or bad, and then she introduced me to another woman, but I wasn’t trying to make something happen with them because I know the system enough. When you eventually come across my work and someone else tells you it’s good, then you’ll come and talk to me, but I’m not going to go after you like that. That said, I could tell that she was worried that I was going to go after her like that. So that’s generally my experience as a networker: it’s not until people know my work that people care to talk to me, and that I know for a fact. 

Emilie Cheyroux: All right, because on paper, all the networking events that the festival organizes look good for emerging filmmakers. I assume that they meet each other and maybe talk about projects. 

Iris Almaraz: Things do come of networking, but also exhaustion can come from networking. So I have to figure out if I have the bandwidth to do it, especially when I’m in pre-production. I know people that party late into the night but sometimes I need to rest a little bit. I’ve been in this business long enough to know that networking is usually not life-changing but it is life-building; you’re just building on top of one moment after another. That’s my experience anyway. Maybe other people have life-changing moments [laughs]. 

Emilie Cheyroux: Maybe. I’m thinking about the emerging filmmakers because they’ve got this spotlight on them the whole time. 

Iris Almaraz: I will say this, you know, I run a festival…

Emilie Cheyroux: Yes, I’d like you to tell me about it! It is called LIFE, right? 

Iris Almaraz: Yes, it’s called Latina Independent Film Extravaganza. 

Emilie Cheyroux: It’s been going on since 2004, right? 

Iris Almaraz: Well, technically 2004 was the first year I worked on it, but I didn’t continue; other people did. It ended in 2012, but then the pandemic came in 2020 and I realized that I hadn’t been out doing things and meeting people. So I talked to the woman who’s the founder [Josefina Lopez] to convince her to bring this back because I think it’s a good place for other Latinas to know each other, to support each other and to build the community. You know what they say: “A rising tide lifts all boats.” So we decided to bring it back and we have to do it this year; this will be the third year rebooting the festival. 

Emilie Cheyroux: I did see that there was a festival in 2022.

Iris Almaraz: That was the rebooting and one of the key points of it is for the collective to know each other. We want to push forward those that are ready for the industry. We want them to get awardsand all that, though it’s not just about that. I’ve seen so many people that met at our festival because of the way we set it up. There’s the luncheon where we’re meeting each other. It’s not a competitive environment; it’s not too chaotic, and the female Latina filmmakers work on projects together. The woman [name] Stephanie Saint Sanchez who is the nun in Bloody Maria (she’s also one of the cowriters on Bloody Maria), we met at the very first year. She lives in Texas so we would have never met!

Emilie Cheyroux: Right now in Texas, a group of five female filmmakers, including Iliana Sosa and Sharon Arteaga, are working on a film called The Texas Latina Project. I was wondering if you also invited Latinas from Texas at the festival, to extend the solidarity with female filmmakers out of state. 

Iris Almaraz: It is open to everyone. We’ve had women coming from Brazil, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, New York, Texas, San Diego, San Francisco. The films must be directed by an identifying Latina. They could be gender fluid or gender neutral because it is about raising the feminine voice. They could be a trans woman as well, obviously. We consider that the experience of Latina, Chicana and indigenous women is not homogeneous. You can be from Central America, you can be from South America, you can live in England but you were born and raised in Mexico; it is okay for the festival as long as it is about your ancestry. I believe Iliana Sosa had a film at the festival one year. Isn’t it Detained in the Desert (2013)  My friend Josefina Lopez wrote the screenplay. 

Emilie Cheyroux: Yes, it was.

Iris Almaraz: I think that was at one of the earlier LIFE film festivals as well. It’s definitely something that we do, almost like a summer camp, where people could come in and really be with each other. The first year of the reboot, we launched an award for a badass Latina in the film industry who’s been paving the way and we call it the Lupe Ontiveros award. Are you familiar with her? 

Emilie Cheyroux: Yes, I know who she is. She’s the one who said that the overwhelming majority of the roles that she was given were maids because the film industry did not believe she could do something else. 

Iris Almaraz: Yes, indeed. So the very first year, we had the festival, we gave her the goddess award. And at that festival, she said something – that I actually brought up to Josefina when I said we should relaunch it – she said that it was really beautiful and that she hoped we continued this because we need this. So we created the Lupe Ontiveros Award, her sons came to present it and we gave it to a producer named Elizabeth Avellan, who used to be married to Robert Rodriguez. Robert Rodriguez would be nothing without her: That’s on the record, Robert! [laughs]

Emilie Cheyroux: Was Lupe Ontiveros a role model to you? 

Iris Almaraz: I would say so because what’s unfortunate when you’re a brown woman is that there’s not really a lot of role models. And when you’re a director, actress aren’t really your role models either. But I do remember seeing her. I was a volunteer at LALIFF, the first year I moved back from San Francisco, and she came and spoke to all the volunteers and she was sassy. She brought an Aztec dancer, and just seeing her energy and her passion, that was something I saw right away. I knew her from  Selena (Gregory Nava, 1997), but I had known her before in indie Latino films. One of the great ones is called El Norte (Gregory Nava, 1983) and she stole the show as the sassy crazy maid. That was where I just saw real talent come through. And did you know—speaking of role models and us being under-recognized—one of the reasons why I wanted to have that award is because the year she died of cancer, they left her off of the In Memoriam list.

Emilie Cheyroux: Yes, that’s what I was going to say: they forgot her at the Oscars. 

Iris Almaraz: That’s crazy. 

Emilie Cheyroux: It’s crazy because everybody knows her even here in France; we know her face. Even people who dont know her name know her face.

Iris Almaraz: She was in Zoot Suit (Luis Valdez, 1981) and The Goonies (Richard Donner, 1985). I’m getting chills right now because how do you have a character-actor like that? who isn’t going to make it? She is so talented. I think about Molly Shannon, too: she is as funny as Will Ferrell but because she’s a woman she didn’t have that same opportunities. That’s the same thing with Lupe, right? And Molly Shannon is funny [laughs]. The movie that I really identify with is called Superstar (Bruce McCulloch, 1999). She’s making out with a tree [laughs]. Well, she should have had the same opportunities as Will Ferrell. 

Emilie Cheyroux: Sure, but women who are funny are usually not taken seriously. They are supposed to be sexy or to be emotional but not funny. 

Iris Almaraz: Yeah. And if they’re funny, it’s only in relation to the male. 

Emilie Cheyroux: And if they’re funny, they’re usually not supposed to be attractive. 

Iris Almaraz: That’s so true. Sad and true. 

Emilie Cheyroux: Last question. Now that we’ve talked about all of this, can you tell me what your relationship to feminism as a person and as an artist is. It is a tough question but what comes to mind?

Iris Almaraz: What’s interesting to me is the way I understood feminism the first time that I heard of it was that feminism is about equality. Equality; that’s what it is. You hear people call feminists “feminazis” or whatever now. Are we all in an equal space? No, we’re not. Does it take work to make an equal space? It does. I believe that men have run this world for a few thousand years and it’s been a mess. I don’t know if women would be any better or not. I’d like to think that, as mothers, we wouldn’t be so ready to go to war. And I believe that it’s time to expand feminism because we live in a world where there are children who are starving and there are genocides happening in multiple places. I think that those are heavily masculine unbalanced systems. You know, there’s the Ying and the Yang and those are overly masculine. And I believe that feminism could balance our energies because it goes beyond women’s rights: we have children that are dying, and bombs are a masculine structure. And the oil industry, the killing of Mother Nature is masculine rape. 

Emilie Cheyroux: Would you say that feminism leads to ecofeminism?.

Iris Almaraz: The Earth is a mother because it gives life. And humans are trying to figure out, “Why does she bleed? Why does she give life? What is her strength?” And I think that women’s true inner strength is scary to men. So I’m not into a lot of labels and identities, but I believe that feminism needs to be a shift if this planet is going to survive. It is a female energy that we’re saving. 

Emilie Cheyroux: Thank you so much for your time.